I’ve been waiting quite a while for the Vivokey Flex One Vivokey Flex Apex and I am curious what this rebranding entails.
These are mostly questions for @amal , but others can answer if they know.
In the past there was talk of NDAs with NXP in order to get documentation, a locked down ecosystem that could be (permanently) opted out of, and I have quite a lot of trouble finding documentation or resources to prototype java card stuff that’s not in-vivo.
Is the Apex chip going to change any of that? Is it a new chip with a more open framework, or are we still beholden to NXPs VERY enterprise/corporate ideology?
Are the ecosystem restrictions still going to be the same, or are we going to see easier integration with us DIY types?
Do you have any suggestions for resources on Java Card platform development or documentation, or plan on eventually providing such?
Thanks a ton!
Keep in mind, all of the above information was from the first time I was looking into the Flex One, many months ago, and I am glad to see there are new developments in that regard!
Ok so the NDAs have more to do with the chips and their operational quirks than java card… java card itself is very open. The current curator of java and java card is Oracle, and you can get their SDKs and documentation freely.
There may be certain functions that are built into NXP’s chips that are not included in the java card specification, which are likely going to be under NDA… for example, the P60 chip was Java Card 3.0.4 and there are certain functions one needs in order to do certain types of crypto like ecdsa, and those funcitons are not included in JC 3.0.4 so NXP makes their own extended functions and puts those in the P60 chip… but those functions are proprietary and so they protect them with an NDA. However, the P71 chip is JC 3.0.5 which includes those and other functions necessary for doing ecdsa (and other things) so those NXP functions are removed… and I’m sure others are added.
In short, you’ll only need an NDA with NXP if you want to leverage certain functions contained within the chip which are not part of the Java Card specification running on the chip.
These are very old chips… the P40 is a SmartMX, the P60 is a SmartMX2 and the P71 is a SmartMX3 chip… I believe the P40 runs Java Card 2.2.2 which is very very popular and capable of doing many things, but it does lack certain advanced features for certain cryptographic functions.
We will probably look into making P71 based developer cards available if Fidesmo does not pursue this for their cards.
