Naked Science Forum

Non Life Sciences => Technology => Topic started by: neilep on 02/08/2009 16:55:56

Title: Is My Credit Card Chip Clever ?
Post by: neilep on 02/08/2009 16:55:56

Dear Credit Card Chipologists,

As a sheepy I of course have a credit card. I enjoy a credit limit of extortionate heights !

Look, here's my card and it thinks it's a Klevur card !!..

 [ Invalid Attachment ]
If it so klevur then why does it allow me
to use my arse crack as a card swipe ?


I was wondering what the computational capability of my cards chip is nowadays ?..is it like well powerful ?...akin to a haddock ?...or perhaps an old games console that played ping pong  in 1982?...how does it compare to a ZX81 ?

Whajafink ?

How Klevur is my credit cards chip ?


Hugs & shmishes


mwah mwah mwah !!


neil
Seems I Must Credit My Card With Some Intelligence
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Title: Is My Credit Card Chip Clever ?
Post by: RD on 02/08/2009 17:24:07

Quote

Integrated Circuit (IC) Microprocessor Cards. Microprocessor cards (also generally referred to by the industry as "chip cards") offer greater memory storage and security of data than a traditional mag stripe card. Chip cards also can process data on the card. The current generation of chip cards has an eight-bit processor, 16KB read-only memory, and 512 bytes of random-access memory. This gives them the equivalent processing power of the original IBM-XT computer, albeit with slightly less memory capacity.

Integrated Circuit (IC) Memory Cards. IC memory cards can hold up to 1-4 KB of data, but have no processor on the card with which to manipulate that data. Thus, they are dependent on the card reader (also known as the card-accepting device) for their processing and are suitable for uses where the card performs a fixed operation. 

http://java.sun.com/javacard/reference/docs/smartcards.html

The ZX81 had an 8Kb ROM and 1Kb of RAM on board ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81

Title: Is My Credit Card Chip Clever ?
Post by: lyner on 02/08/2009 19:27:31

They can't mean "1-4kB" can they, unless it's an ancient document. More likely 1-4 GB, don't you think?
I can't open your link, btw. It doesn't load

Title: Is My Credit Card Chip Clever ?
Post by: RD on 02/08/2009 20:05:35

From the same site (link works for me) ...

 [ Invalid Attachment ]
http://java.sun.com/javacard/reference/docs/smartcards.html#chart

Given Moores "law" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law) these capacity figures will soon be exceeded.

Wikipedia has a page on "Smart Cards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_card)" but I can't see any specifications.

Title: Is My Credit Card Chip Clever ?
Post by: LeeE on 03/08/2009 00:32:56

The processing power of the 8-bit CPUs in these types of card is far lower than the general purpose i8080 and Z80 CPUs used in, respectively, the IBM XT and Sinclair ZX81.  Not only will they have a much reduced instruction set, limiting what they can do, but they'll also be running a lot slower.

Title: Is My Credit Card Chip Clever ?
Post by: neilep on 03/08/2009 09:11:14

Thanks All for the great info. I just had it in my head that they would have far more processing prowess than that. I suppose there is not much information that they need to contain, though, I gather there must be some encryption processing happening there for security purposes.

Title: Is My Credit Card Chip Clever ?
Post by: lyner on 03/08/2009 13:56:47

RD
I got the link, eventually, thanks.
It all makes sense now.