Microchip Introduces Hardware Cryptography-Enabled 32-bit Microcontroller for Internet of Things Applications

CHANDLER, AZ -- Microchip Technology Inc. announces a new hardware crypto-enabled 32-bit microcontroller. The CEC1302's hardware-based cryptography suite offers significant performance improvements over firmware-based solutions. The CEC1302 makes it easy to add security to Internet of Things (IoT) devices, offering easy-to-use encryption and authentication for programming flexibility and increased levels of security.

Security threats are increasing exponentially in terms of frequency, targeted devices, malignancy and costs of attacks. The CEC1302 allows for pre-boot authentication of the system firmware in order to ensure that the firmware is untouched and uncorrupted, thereby preventing security attacks such as man-in-the-middle, denial-of-service and backdoor vulnerabilities. It can also be used to authenticate any firmware updates, protecting the system from malware or memory corruption.

The CEC1302 offers private key and customer programming flexibility with a full-featured microcontroller in a single-package solution in order to minimize customer risk. The device provides savings in terms of power drain and also improved execution of application performance. In addition, since the CEC1302 is a full 32-bit microcontroller with an ARM® Cortex®-M4 core, adding security functionality only results in a small additional cost. The CEC1302 can be used as a standalone security coprocessor or can replace an existing microcontroller. The hardware-enabled public key engine of the device is also 20 to 50 times faster than firmware-enabled algorithms, and the hardware-enabled hashing is 100 times faster.

Development Support

In order to quickly develop applications based on the CEC1302, use MikroElektronika's CEC1302 Clicker (part #: MIKROE-1970) and CEC1302 Clicker 2 (part #: MIKROE-1969). Use these boards with MikroElektronika's complete development toolchain for Microchip CEC1302 ARM® Cortex®-M4 MCUs which includes compilers, development boards, programmers/debuggers or with standard third-party ARM® MCU toolchains.

Pricing and Availability

The CEC1302 (part number CEC1302D-SZ-C0) is available today for sampling and volume production in a 144-WFBGA package starting at $1.75 each in 10,000 unit quantities.

For more information, visit
http://www.microchip.com/CEC1302_Promo8263
http://www.microchip.com/CEC1302