Patent ID: 8332934

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: a main body portion of the image forming apparatus; and at least one replaceable unit which is mountable to the main body portion of the image forming apparatus to execute an image forming operation, wherein the main body portion of the image forming apparatus comprises a main controller to control operations of the image forming apparatus, wherein the at least one replaceable unit comprises: a memory unit to store information regarding the replaceable unit and to store a program for performing an initialization; and a central processing unit (CPU) which is coupled to the memory unit, wherein, when the replaceable unit is mounted to the image forming apparatus, the CPU is initialized using the program stored in the memory unit of the replaceable unit, the CPU configured to access the information stored in the memory unit and to perform authentication and cryptographic data communication with the main controller of the image forming apparatus by executing a cryptographic algorithm selected from a plurality of cryptographic algorithms.