Chip maker NXP has licensed Intrinsic ID's Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) technology for use with its SmartMX2 smart card and secure element chips. "PUFs are an innovative way of safeguarding individual chips from data theft by using the unique 'fingerprint' inherent in every semiconductor device to protect its encryption key, making it very hard to clone and thus reverse-engineer and compromise security microcontrollers" says NXP.