Programmable system-on-chip architecture has been released by Cypress Semiconductor Corp, which combines the company’s PSoC analogue and digital fabric and CapSense capacitive touch technology with ARM’s power-efficient Cortex-M0 core.
The architecture comes with access to dozens of free PSoC Components— ‘virtual chips’ represented by icons in the company’s PSoC Creator integrated design environment.
The PSoC 4 architecture joins the company’s existing CapSense capacitive-touch sensing technology. In addition to capacitive sensing, this latest release targets field-oriented control (FOC) motor control, temperature sensing, security access, portable medical, and many other applications
“PSoC 4 enables design engineers to leverage the overall trend toward industry-standard, lower-cost ARM-based solutions, the broad availability of ARM software, and the migration of 8-and 16-bit MCU applications to 32-bit solutions,” said John Weil, Senior Director of PSoC Marketing for Cypress’s Programmable Systems Division.
“Inserting the popular Cortex-M0 processor core into the highly-customizable logic and analog circuitry of Cypress’s PSoC products makes a very appealing combination for applications with unique I/O requirements that warrant a higher performance processor or the widely-used ARM architecture,” said Tom Starnes, Principal Analyst with semiconductor market research firm Objective Analysis. “The trim PSoC 4 with the highly optimized Cortex-M0 processor makes it easier to step up from 8- and 16-bit or proprietary MCU architectures.”
The new architecture is said tooffer an industry challenging power leakage of 150nA while retaining SRAM memory, programmable logic, and the ability to wake up from an interrupt. In stop mode, it is claimed to consume 20nA while maintaining wake-up capability. It has a wide operating voltage ranges, enabling full analogue and digital operation from 1.71V to 5.5V. The company advises, the architecture supports integrated, high-performance custom signal chains and provides both configurable analogue and flexible routing.
The main features of the new release include, an easy-to-use graphical interface enabling designers to drag and drop pre-characterised, production-ready analogue and digital IP blocks—PSoC Components—into a single PSoC device to create customised, feature-rich, and highly differentiated end products.
Cypress Semiconductor Corp
