CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gsmsim-card
Hélène
Hélène

Reputation: 387

An application running on UICC?

I was trying to learn about UICC (Universal Integrated Circuit Card). I read this article: http://www.justaskgemalto.com/en/communicating/tips/what-uicc-and-how-it-different-sim-card

I don't really understand this phrase: "Like the SIM, the UICC has an application that stores your contacts and another that..." The application stored on the UICC runs on the phone OS? Or the UICC has an operating system ?!??

Another phrase: "Smaller in size than a full card, it contains a computer, or microprocessor, its own data storage and software."

How can it contain a microprocessor?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 498

Answers (2)

CodeLikeNoonesBusiness
CodeLikeNoonesBusiness

Reputation: 677

I don't really understand this phrase: "Like the SIM, the UICC has an application that stores your contacts and another that..." The application stored on the UICC runs on the phone OS? Or the UICC has an operating system ?!??

  1. The application here refers to sim card applications, which runs on the card OS, instead of Phone OS. The "contacts" here refers to the contacts saved to your sim card, not your phone. In the era of Nokia, if you have lived that generation, you would know that once upon a time, people choose to save contacts in the sim card instead of the phone, because sim card can be inserted into another phone without losing contacts. That was an era with no smart phones :). The UICC is the new generation SIM card, so the SIM(2G technology), or USIM(3G technology) is just an application on the UICC, both of which have capabilities of storing contact. But you need to know it is different from phone device contacts.

  2. The UICC Of course is an operation system - or it has an operation system, because uicc or sim card is a CPU card, which means the chip has a CPU inside, not a very powerful processor, but enough, and is more and more advanced through time because the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit is doubled in every 24 month, according to the famous Moore's law. First we used 8 bit chip, now 32 bit. In the near future, might be 64 or higher.

Another phrase: "Smaller in size than a full card, it contains a computer, or microprocessor, its own data storage and software."

Refers to the point 2. above.

Upvotes: 2

MFM
MFM

Reputation: 91

Yes indeed an UICC runs an operating system. UICCs are generally based on a secure MCU, that's possible because the die which is few mm squared is implemented directly without the huge usual package.

Upvotes: 1

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