STARBOX

What is STARBOX?

STARBOX is an emulator for StarChip® products. It is designed to provide technical teams with a development and test tool, available before real chip samples are available, and maintained all along product life.

What is inside STARBOX?

STARBOX is composed of two electronic boards:

FPGA Development board

The FPGA board contains the complete and exact chip digital design. The analog parts are replaced by SC-ISO interfaces. The memories (RAM and FLASH) are emulated by the FPGA memories, but the way to address them is the same as real chip (timings and access modes).
The board LCD display and the 8 user LEDs can be also configured by user software. Moreover, it is possible to simulate environmental attacks thanks to buttons on the emulator side.
System clock frequency is 25MHz, which matches with real chip clock frequency. Thus, code developed on emulator will have exactly the same behavior on real chip with some minor differences.
Key point is that the content of the FPGA is exactly the same than the chip itself.

SC-ISO Starchip® Daughter board

SC-ISO is designed to perform the voltage level adaptation of emulated pads on the FPGA board and the levels of the smart card probe interface.