MIFARE - History

History

• 1994 — MIFARE Classic 1k contactless technology introduced.
• 1996 — First transport scheme in Seoul using MIFARE Classic 1k.
• 1997 — MIFARE PRO with Triple DES coprocessor introduced.
• 1999 — MIFARE PROX with PKI coprocessor introduced.
• 2001 — MIFARE UltraLight introduced.
• 2002 — MIFARE DESFire introduced, microprocessor based product.
• 2004 — MIFARE DESFire SAM introduced, secure infrastructure counterpart of MIFARE DESFire.
• 2006 — MIFARE DESFire EV1 is announced as the first product to support 128-bit AES
• 2008 — MIFARE Plus is announced as a drop-in replacement for MIFARE Classic based on 128-bit AES
• 2008 — MIFARE Ultralight C is introduced as paperticket IC featuring Triple DES Authentication
• 2010 — MIFARE SAM AV2 is introduced as secure key storage for readers AES, Triple DES, PKI Authentication

MIFARE was developed by Mikron; the name stands for MIkron FARE-collection System. It was acquired by Philips in 1998. Mikron sourced silicon from Atmel in the US, Philips in the Netherlands, and Siemens in Germany.

After the Philips acquisition, Hitachi licensed MIFARE for the development of the contactless smart card solution for NTT's IC telephone card which started in 1999 and finished in 2006.

Motorola tried to develop MIFARE-like chip for wired-logic version but finally gave up. The project expected one million cards per month for start, but that fell to 100,000 per month just before they gave up the project.

In the NTT contactless IC telephone card project, three parties joined: Tokin-Tamura-Siemens, Hitachi (Philips-contract for technical support), and Denso (Motorola-only production). NTT asked for two versions of chip, i.e. wired-logic chip (like MIFARE Classic) with small memory and big memory capacity. Hitachi developed only big memory version and cut part of the memory to fit for the small memory version.

In 2008 NXP licenced MIFARE Plus and MIFARE DESFire to Renesas Technology. In 2010 NXP licenced MIFARE to Gemalto. In 2011 NXP licenced Oberthur to use MIFARE on SIM cards. These licencees are developing Near Field Communication products.

Infineon Technologies(formerly Siemens) licenced MIFARE from Mikron in 1994 and developed and today produces various dervatives based on MIFARE technology including 1K memory and various microcontrollers with MIFARE emulations, including devices for use in USIM with Near Field Communication.