Hengzhi chip

The Hengzhi chip (Chinese: 恒智; pinyin: héngzhì, 联想“恒智”安全芯片) is a microcontroller that can store secured information, designed by the People's Republic of China government and manufactured in China. Its functionalities should be similar to those offered by a Trusted Platform Module but, unlike the TPM, it does not follow Trusted Computing Group specifications. Lenovo is selling PCs installed with Hengzhi security chips. The chip could be a development of the IBM ESS (Embedded security subsystem) chip, which was basically a public key smart card placed directly on the motherboard's system management bus. As of September 2006, no public specifications about the chip are available.