ARM wants mobile or IoT devices to include a tiny integrated SIM card:
Every millimeter of space matters when you're trying to build increasingly complex electronics into increasingly tiny packages, and the relatively spacious SIM card has long been an area of frustration for hardware manufacturers. Now, the chip design company ARM may have an answer: an integrated component called an iSIM that's built into the same chip as the processor.
ARM says the iSIM will take up a "fraction of a millimeter squared," whereas the current SIM standard — Nano SIMs — are about 12.3 x 8.8mm in size, not including the hardware usually needed to house them. Not only will that save space, but ARM says it'll more importantly save on costs, too: instead of paying "tens of cents" per card, manufacturers will be paying single-digital cents.
Also at CNET, Tom's Hardware, and Wccftech.
Related: Infineon Demos a 1.65 mm^2 eSIM Chip
Related Stories
Infineon is using a 65nm process as well as the GlobalFoundries 14nm Low Power Plus process to create ever-tinier SIM cards:
At MWC this year, Infineon showcased a lineup of its current and embedded SIM products. The company demonstrates not only the industry-standard MFF2 eSIM chip, but also considerably smaller ICs designed for future miniature devices (many of which may not even exist yet as a category) as well as M2M (machine to machine) applications. It is noteworthy that to manufacture an eSIM the size of a match head, Infineon uses GlobalFoundries 14LPP process technology, taking advantage of leading-edge lithography to bring the size of a simple device down.
[...] The first one, when packaged, has dimensions of 2.5×2.7×0.5 mm, which essentially means that it has no packaging at all. This IC is produced using a mature 65 nm process technology and that means that it is very cheap. The second eSIM implementation that Infineon demonstrates is actually even tinier: its dimensions when fully packaged and ready to use are just 1.5×1.1×0.37 mm. The IC is made using 14LPP process technology by GlobalFoundries and the foundry charges the chip developer accordingly. Using a leading-edge process technology to make eSIM cards is not something common, but the approach enables developers of various devices to take advantage of the smallest cards possible (another advantage of such cards are low voltages and power consumption).
The current JEDEC eSIM form factor has an area of 5×6 mm (30 mm2, over 18 times the area of Infineon's smaller version) and less than 1 mm thickness (0.85 mm in Infineon's comparison).
A complaint by Apple has reportedly led to an investigation of two mobile carriers and the GSMA. AT&T and Verizon want to prevent users from using eSIM to easily switch carriers without replacing a SIM card:
The Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation into potential coordination by AT&T, Verizon and a telecommunications standards organization to hinder consumers from easily switching wireless carriers, according to six people with knowledge of the inquiry.
In February, the Justice Department issued demands to AT&T, Verizon and the G.S.M.A., a mobile industry standards-setting group, for information on potential collusion to thwart a technology known as eSIM, said two of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details are confidential.
The technology lets people remotely switch wireless providers without having to insert a new SIM card into a device. AT&T and Verizon face accusations that they colluded with the G.S.M.A. to try to establish standards that would allow them to lock a device to their network even if it had eSIM technology.
The investigation was opened about five months ago after at least one device maker and one wireless carrier filed formal complaints with the Justice Department, two of the people said. The device maker was Apple, one of them said. Representatives for the Justice Department, the G.S.M.A. and Apple declined to comment.
Also at The Verge, WSJ, 9to5Mac, and AppleInsider.
Related: Infineon Demos a 1.65 mm^2 eSIM Chip
ARM Introduces "iSIM", Integrated Directly Onto Chips
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 22 2018, @12:42PM (19 children)
I mean, who wouldn't want to be rid of the convenience of being able to swap one SIM card out for another? Much simpler to just swap out the entire piece of hardware.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @01:03PM (3 children)
Over CPUID in Intel chips in the 90s. Or TPM modules in the '00s...
But no complaints at all since Cell Phones came out with 2-5 serial numbers each, and all of a sudden every component of your desktop/laptop has a serial number on it that is being sent to Microsoft, Ubuntu, Steam, or your software company, whether freeware or paid proprietary... and nobody is raising an uproar anymore?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @01:09PM
Millennials.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 22 2018, @01:45PM (1 child)
Cell phones have to be identifiable, at least by the phone company. Making that info open to anyone else is a less stellar idea but having a functioning network without unique identifiers isn't really viable.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @04:25PM
No. The only thing the phone company needs to identify is your SIM card. Change the SIM card, and as far as the phone company is concerned, it should be a new phone. Put the SIM card into a new phone, and as far as the phone company is concerned, it should be the same phone as before.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by ledow on Thursday February 22 2018, @01:25PM (9 children)
All you've done is move up one layer, however.
Your phone number is tied to your SIM which is accessed from a device with an IMEI number.
The IMEI is fixed to the device.
The SIM is now going to start being fixed to the device too.
But the phone number now needs to be MORE easily portable.
And which, out of all of those, do you really care about as an ordinary user? The phone number.
This is going to mean that you'll be able to port numbers even quicker and move them from handset to handset from, say, a web interface on your telephony carrier.
"Hey, Vodafone, please move my phone number to this iSIM number... done."
This is one of the reasons that WhatsApp is so successful... there are literally no usernames or passwords to remember, or contacts to bring over. It just runs from your phone number, which is all you need to know (and verify the ownership of) in order to work it and bring everything back.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ledow on Thursday February 22 2018, @01:29PM (2 children)
Not forgetting... now your phone can hold an unlimited number of SIM cards.
You can have 20 numbers on one phone.
You can literally add a SIM for every country, network or package deal that you want.
When 4G fails on one of them, it'll just pick up from any other network that offers 4G near you with an appropriate SIM.
As it is, mainstream phones miss out on the "dual-SIM" market which is popular with anyone who travels. With an iSIM, it'll be even easier.
I think the advantages far outweigh the cost of the rare "Oh, my phone is destroyed, I'll have to move my number to another handset" convenience, which can be solved with a web portal.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @05:10PM (1 child)
"Not forgetting... now your phone can hold an unlimited number of SIM cards."
Source required. Who said that feature will be made possible?
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Thursday February 22 2018, @07:17PM
I'm sure it will be made possible, but whether it's actually available to customers is another matter.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 22 2018, @01:46PM (3 children)
That's not more portable, that's less. Right now it takes me a few seconds and zero calls to a support line.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday February 22 2018, @05:03PM (2 children)
To move your number from one handset to another, yes. But what does it take to move your phone number to a different carrier?
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Thursday February 22 2018, @07:19PM
In the UK, a Porting Authorisation Code (PAC), which you request from your current carrier, and submit to your new carrier. The carriers then sort it out in the background within a day or so.
I understand that some other countries have their own systems, which get it done in minutes.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 23 2018, @01:30AM
Which is entirely non-useful when you're talking IoT gear.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @05:24PM
Are you serious? Do you really think the carriers are going to make a simple web interface to make changes like this?
No, not in the US. I have enough experience with Verizon Wireless and AT&T that I can pretty much guarantee that if/once this becomes available it will only be changeable over the phone with Customer Service, and only after getting transferred a minimum of three times.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 23 2018, @10:03AM
Where do you live that a web interface can be quicker than the two seconds it takes to swap out a sim card?
I suspect you won't be able to use the web interface from the same phone (in the case of moving the sim card from a broken phone, that would be the one currently without a sim card), so you'll have to include:
Find a computer. Boot it up. Start the web browser. Go to the porting web site. Authenticate yourself. Provide proof that you own the phone. Wait for the move to actually be done.
In less than the two seconds that it takes to move a sim card.
(Score: 3, Touché) by AndyTheAbsurd on Thursday February 22 2018, @01:39PM
I came into this thread to congratulate ARM for turning modern GSM into last decade's CDMA, but I see you've already applied the appropriate amount of snark.
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday February 22 2018, @02:17PM (3 children)
SIMs exist from back in the days of car phones. The idea was that you'd be buy a credit-card sized thing with a SIM on it and, when you rented a car with a carphone, be able to insert the card and have it work with your account. It's several decades since this model existed, yet we still use physical SIM chips to port phone numbers between phones. This is not really needed and there's a standard, eSIM, for getting rid of it. eSIM lets you have a programmable SIM in the device, so that you can switch between providers with a simple software update. Apple uses this as the 'Apple SIM' in their iOS devices, in addition to the removable SIM, so that you can easily get a local short-term contract when travelling - it's much easier to just go to the SIM app and select from a variety of providers than it is to get a physical SIM from a vending machine at an airport and hope that it's a good deal and not something designed to fleece tourists, or to wait until you can get to a mobile phone shop.
The difference with the iSIM is that it's a tiny bit of circuitry embedded on a small SoC, rather than a separate chip.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Dr Spin on Thursday February 22 2018, @09:01PM (2 children)
get a physical SIM from a vending machine at an airport
You get them from hawkers for a dollar in most third world countries, and you don't give him the dollar till it works. In Europe, the network gives you one free if you buy EUR10 credit. In fact, they shove them into your hands whether you want them or not, like AOL CDs, in a lot of places.
I would not even think about buying a phone if I could not switch SIMs. WHat if I want to lend the phone to one of my kids?
What if I want to put in the SIM I use to register for web sites that I KNOW will spam me?
Sometimes I want to put the SIM in my old Nokia cos I don't want a huge smart phone in my clothing.
Sometimes I want to put someone else's SIM in my phone to see if the phone or the SIM is faulty.
Non-removable SIMs are in the same league as non-removable batteries: A wonderful tool for shafting the customer.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 23 2018, @10:09AM
Not quite. Your phone number is not tied to the battery, and your new phone wants a different voltage anyway, so you can't move your old battery over.
Most people don't care about replacing the battery. They want an excuse to buy the new phone anyway. But most people will at some point be in the situation of wanting to move their phone number to a different phone for one reason or another.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday February 26 2018, @09:12AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @12:54PM (1 child)
Who wants to bet that this savings for the manufacturer translates to a cost increase for the consumer under the reason of a "new feature", despite the fact that they are taking away existing features (swapping SIM cards).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @02:20PM
And then they'll make it a yearly subscription service, that will count as another feature to bill for.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by WeekendMonkey on Thursday February 22 2018, @01:09PM (3 children)
A technology like this is bound to be cloud based. Just upload your SIM to the cloud and download to a new device, better still it can be downloaded by your favourite hacking group/TLA in the next big breach.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @01:51PM (1 child)
I hope not all manufacfurers will implement this.
I like to keep these things separate, SIM and phone/imei. I do not want a manufacturer now trade imei nrs with vodafone phones and customer data and the viceversa.
And why the fuck would I want a phone that has 20 sims embedded like someone above mentioned? For all I know it also could have 20 more which do not show up and are used each for whatever purpose. Like for constantly uploading coordinates, another for sensory data, another for microphone voice chanel, another for vnc like connections in hardware. And since my buddy will have the same kind of device, since I have his number, why not add another chanel to connect to it directly and relay that info too? He is visiting Moscow these days you know?
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday February 22 2018, @05:02PM
20 seems a bit more than normal, but for a phone it's often useful to have separate contracts for local voice, international voice calls, voice calls while roaming, data in your home country, and data in the country that you're visiting. With most phones, that requires juggling 5 SIMs and you can't, for example, easily use one for incoming calls and one for outgoing calls. With eSIM, you can have multiple virtual SIMs and control what you use each one for.
That's an entirely pointless thing to worry about. On most phones, the baseband is a separate chip that communicates with the main SoC. It runs closed source firmware and communicates with the outside world via an encrypted connection. If someone wanted to put malicious code in your phone, they can do it already. A typical smartphone SoC has a few dozen ARM cores, of which 4-8 are exposed to the OS. Most of the others have complete access to the bus and run code that isn't visible to you.
All of this is possible without interacting with the OS on most existing smartphones, if you have control over the baseband firmware.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 23 2018, @10:12AM
I bet you are one of those people who store their dropbox password in their dropbox as well.
The SIM card is your authentication towards the phone company. If you make it cloud based, you'll need some kind of authentication to access your authentication.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday February 22 2018, @01:39PM (15 children)
from the article:
"There remains one real outstanding question here: whether phone carriers will approve"
Uh, no. What about us? You know, the customers, who are (were?) always right? If the design allows phone manufacturers to "forget" to provide means to change the SIM, then this is terrible.
I've seen enough crap in Android that I think distrust is warranted. Like, Android makes it very difficult to shut off cellular data. You can't just not use it, you have to shut down all this background data. Android does provide means to do that, but it throws in this nag screen "Background data restricted. Touch to remove restriction". So just touch it by accident, and pow, background data is back. I've looked into getting rid of that notice, but there doesn't seem to be any easy way. I've also been annoyed by ad supported bloatware that somehow got added to my phone without my knowledge or consent. (I'm sure they believe they have my consent buried in all this fine print that no one reads.) Hooked it up to the charger as usual one day, but instead of the usual screen of icons, this app I'd never seen before, Top Clean, took over the screen, claimed my RAM was running short, and even threw on an ad for Facebook. I promptly uninstalled it. Checking online, that app seems to have good reviews, but I'm skeptical that it's mostly astroturfing.
No, for this not to turn into a disaster, customers will have to hold telecoms accountable. We have won a few things, such as phone number portability. Carriers can't hold a phone number hostage, much though I'm sure they'd still like to.
Further, what about the microSD slot? It wastes about as much space as the nano SIM, why not do something about that too?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TheRaven on Thursday February 22 2018, @02:19PM (11 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 5, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 22 2018, @02:37PM (10 children)
I provide IoT devices lately and I absolutely do want a removable SIM. I can have a service guy with no computer skills whatsoever change out a faulty piece of hardware, put the old SIM and SD card in the new kit, and not have to do anything at all on my end of things. Anything that does nothing but cause me extra work is not a feature, it's a design flaw.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday February 22 2018, @04:31PM (9 children)
What kind of failure do you imagine in the SIM? If it's a physical failure of the SIM, then replacement is the only option. The iSIM is such a small part of the SoC though that it's basically eliminating this as a failure mode: if the iSIM is damaged then the SoC is badly damaged and you will need to replace it anyway. By putting it on die, you eliminate all failure modes related to the connection between the SIM and the rest of the unit.
If you're talking about needing to upgrade the software, would you rather send out a service guy (who, in spite of lacking computer skills, still needs paying) or just send an OTA update that updates the SIM? If you're switching to another mobile provider, you can send out a single update for all of the devices and update their iSIMs, rather than have to go and physically replace each one. If you don't want to support OTA updates, then your unskilled service guy will now be plugging in a USB device or similar, rather than swapping the SIM, but that doesn't sound like it would require more skill.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @04:33PM (3 children)
Reading comprehension: Massive fail.
If the old SIM card were defective, then why would he want to put it into the replacement hardware? And why would he want to replace the hardware instead of the SIM card in the first place?
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday February 22 2018, @04:55PM (2 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @06:50PM (1 child)
Except the SD card is, ideally, identical across devices and copied in bulk. Now each one will have to be have to be unique.
The same tech could have handled a software upgrade before by swapping a new SD card into the device. Now the SD card would have to be pre-programmed for that specific one with the sim card info, or each update is a manual thing on the device (and the SD card must be writable...)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @08:22PM
In other words, NextGen DRM.
I like modularity and modular components. This iSIM and the usecases and implementation ideas seem to be the contrary of it. Creating solutions for invented pdoblems. It is the same with phones with replacable batteries which are now almost nonexistent. Both of these things are devolutions only to the benefit of the vendor. Pissing on everyone's head but hey, they are courteus plenty because are calling it rain.
(Score: 2) by AndyTheAbsurd on Thursday February 22 2018, @04:48PM (4 children)
You missed the point pretty badly there. The case that The Mighty Buzzard is talking about is not failure of the SIM, but failure of something in the rest of the device. Having a hard-wired SIM means that the account that the device reports to changes every time the device is changed. With the existing, removable SIM system, you can slap a new device in place transferring the existing SIM (and OS/data log/whatever else on an SD card) and not have to worry about "oh, client X used have device 728 and now they've got device 989 so let's update their account"...and the associated potential errors that go with it, like the service guy having sloppy handwriting, so what he originally wrote as "989" he reads as "967" when he gets around to doing the updates two days later.
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday February 22 2018, @04:52PM (3 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @05:25PM
"Simple", the magic word here. From previous experience in life it will be insanely difficult for the first few years atleast, then it'll be a bit better, but the old HW is dropped of support and you can't do it anymore. Then there'll be another software version and it'll drop more support and copying stuff between different vendors will be shit from day 1 to day infinity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @08:34PM (1 child)
You are assuming a programmable SIM is a good thing.
No sir. Noone in my family would want to spend the day over the phone with customer support to activate a new phone with the same nr because they accidentally broke what they had. Pulling out of the drawer that old Nokia 3310 and inserting the simcard of the damaged phone will do perfectly.
I could agree to this tech uses in the industry or many other fields. But please keep it out of my phone.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday February 26 2018, @09:14AM
Much easier than trying to cut a SIM down to the newer smaller size that this generation of phones uses, or waiting for a replacement if you lose it.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 4, Informative) by Immerman on Thursday February 22 2018, @03:14PM
You're thinking of the old phrase. It's since been updated, and is now "The customer is always ripe (for the fleecing)".
As a matter of fact, I think the update actually happened several generations ago, but the public was allowed to keep repeating the original phrase for it's consumerist benefits.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @04:31PM
Customers? You are no longer a customer. You're just a consumer. So shut up and consume.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @05:20PM
Never had a "Background data restricted. Touch to remove restriction" nag screen.
(Score: 2) by Snospar on Thursday February 22 2018, @02:17PM
The Telecoms industry is embracing virtualisation in a big way, and part of this is an anticipated move to Virtual SIM cards that do away with the physical object altogether. Unless this iSIM is somehow linked with the implementation of Virtual SIMs then this seems like an odd move.
Huge thanks to all the Soylent volunteers without whom this community (and this post) would not be possible.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Bot on Thursday February 22 2018, @02:29PM (4 children)
The right to bear ARM...
What you want from a phone
1. longer battery life
2. no crap in the software
3. no problems in using it as audio player-external hd
What they want from a phone
1. to become obsolete
2. to collect as much data as possible
All the rest is fluff
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @06:07PM (3 children)
Wait, what? You are the Bot, I think those lists are reversed.
(Score: 4, Touché) by maxwell demon on Thursday February 22 2018, @07:04PM (2 children)
No, it makes perfectly sense:
"longer battery life" — he wants to use the phone as backup battery when his main battery goes empty.
"no crap in the software" — he certainly doesn't want to get infected when connecting to the phone.
"no problems in using it as audio player-external hd" — his internal HD is a bit small, so he also wants to use the phone as external HD. Of course he won't put his vital stuff there, but by moving the audio stuff, he gets more space for the important stuff on the internal HD.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday February 23 2018, @10:42AM (1 child)
Also I had said You, not Me.
What I want from a phone:
1. a sexy I/O connector
2. ???
3. PROFIT!!!
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday February 23 2018, @07:59PM
BotPorn?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.