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An antivirus chip would have been developed by a team of Japanese researchers. A processor of the type FGPA (Programmable Field Gate Array) allowing reprogrammings for regular updates would be integrated in this chip of safety and introduced into the router, making useless the software antiviruses installed in your computers (especially PC), and even of the portable telephones, PDA or others. The costs for this revolutionary chip are still too high according to the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) which has the objective to optimise the design and to create partnerships to reduce the price below the 70 € (euros), which would make this technology easily accessible.

Japanese researchers affirm to have developed a chip which would be able to recognize and block the viruses transmitted on a network before they do not reach a computer. Used in a router, this chip would thus make it possible to ensure the safety of a PC without monopolizing the resources of this last. The main difficulty is in the writing and the rewriting of information within the chip, so that the lists of definition of the viruses are updated as soon as possible.

Officiating for the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Japanese Technology, these researchers estimate that their chip could protect the unit from wide from the domestic or professional networks, of the mobile telephones with the computers while passing by the house automations applications. It would allow to protect the equipment connected which are not able to carry out a software antivirus, as a CD/DVD player...

If they can proof to a government or industry the possibilities of their product, they hope to introduce a commercial version of this chip in the next three to five years. Today, the costs would be too hight and only important sales in volume would make it possible to reduce the final price so that it is accessible, the objective being to get a similar price to that of software antivirus protections.

This antivirus hardware is based on a programmable circuit of type FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) which authorizes the update of information that it contains by the user. Today, the patents relative to this programmable chip are still held for a few years by Xilinx and Altera, which limits the possibilities of development. For Eiichi Takahashi, in charge of this project, this physical antivirus does not have vocation to replace the software of safety " You never have too many locks to your door "...