CryptoAuthentication™ is designed with the system developer in mind. It comes in a tiny 3-pin SOT23 package, which is advantageous when board space is at a premium. The 1-wire interface requires fewer GPIO pins from the microcontroller and reduces connector cost. When the host-side IC is implemented, there is no impact on GPIO requirements since the 1-wire is shared by the host and client authentication ICs. Additionally, the host IC eliminates the need to store host secrets on the microcontroller, and also removes the need for system crypto code since the crypto code is implemented in hardware.