Fully Qualified Production Silicon for Cypress’s First Two PSoC4 Product Families Is Now Available

Additionally, Cypress released its new $25 PSoC 4 Pioneer Development Kit, which extends PSoC programmability to the established Arduino marketplace at a price point geared to drive broad accessibility. Cypress also delivered Service Pack 1 for its PSoC Creator 2.2 Integrated Design Environment, which provides full design support for the 4100 and 4200 families.

The PSoC 4 programmable system-on-chip architecture combines Cypress’s best-in-class PSoC analog and digital fabric and industry-leading CapSense capacitive touch technology with ARM’s power-efficient Cortex-M0 core. This truly scalable, cost-efficient architecture provides access to dozens of free PSoC Components—“virtual chips” represented by icons in PSoC Creator—all for prices as low as $1. The new PSoC 4 device class will challenge proprietary 8-bit and 16-bit microcontrollers, along with other 32-bit devices.

“Our first two PSoC 4 device families were specifically designed for high-volume, low-end, 8-bit-, 16-bit and 32-bit embedded applications,” said John Weil, Senior Director of PSoC Marketing for Cypress’s Programmable Systems Division. “There are an almost limitless number of applications that can benefit from the high flexibility, low power and low cost of these families. Our team has executed flawlessly to deliver these products in record time, and our customers are eager to start designing.”

New Silicon

In addition to low-cost, CY8C41XX devices offer enhanced CapSense capacitive-touch sensing. Combined with integrated, intelligent analog components including operational amplifiers, low-power comparators, and a fast successive approximation ADC all on a single chip, the PSoC 4100 family uniquely addresses the general purpose 8- and 16-bit MCU markets, easing the transition from proprietary MCU platforms to a powerful and flexible ARM-based platform.

In addition to more processing horsepower and enhanced digital capabilities, CY8C42XX devices offer best-in-class power leakage of only 150 nA while retaining SRAM memory, programmable logic, and the ability to wake up from an interrupt. In stop mode, these devices consume only 20 nA while maintaining wake-up capability from an I/O pin. The PSoC 4200 family features the widest operating voltage range of any Cortex-M0-based family, enabling full analog and digital operation from 1.71V to 5.5V. Its flexible analog and digital resources make this family the most reconfigurable ARM Cortex-M0 system-on-chip in the market today.

New Software

PSoC Creator 2.2, the IDE for Cypress’s PSoC 3 and PSoC 5LP architectures, now includes support for the new PSoC 4 architecture. In addition to a robust compiler and programmer, it allows users to configure PSoC programmable hardware into a custom one-chip solution. It includes a rich library of over 100 pre-verified, production-ready analog and digital Components that users can drag and drop and configure to suit a broad array of application requirements.

The Service Pack 1 for PSoC Creator 2.2 adds full production support for the PSoC 4100 and PSoC 4200 families. It also includes 12 new PSoC Components designed specifically to support the new capabilities of the PSoC 4 architecture.

New Kits

The powerful new PSoC 4 Pioneer kit lets designers discover the capabilities of the PSoC 4 architecture. It is highly expandable, including connectors for Arduino-compatible shields and Digilent Pmod daughter cards, enabling customers to pick from a variety of third-party expansion boards. The new kit also includes a CapSense slider, an RGB LED, a pushbutton switch and more. In addition, an onboard PSoC 5LP device serves as the programmer and debugger, eliminating the need for external programmers.

In addition to the PSoC 4 Pioneer kit, Cypress will be offering the PSoC 4200 Family Processor Module (CY8CKIT-038) for the PSoC Development Kit (CY8CKIT-001). It allows designers to interchange different PSoC architectures to experience the range of performance options offered by Cypress.

Availability

Both the PSoC 4100 and PSoC 4200 families are available for immediate purchase from Cypress and its authorized distributors, with some parts available for only $1. The PSoC Creator 2.2 Service Pack 1 IDE and the PSoC 4 Pioneer Kit are also available today.

MCUs Can’t. PSoC Can.

PSoC solutions bring the flash-based equivalent of a field-programmable ASIC to embedded designs without lead-time or NRE penalties. PSoC integrates configurable analog and digital circuits with an on-chip microcontroller, reducing component count and simplifying revisions. A single PSoC device can integrate as many as 100 peripheral functions, accelerating cycle time and improving quality while reducing board space, power consumption, and system cost.

PSoC “future-proofs” designs, protecting them against last-minute specifications changes. It enables firmware-based changes at any point in the design cycle—even out in the field. All PSoC devices are dynamically reconfigurable, enabling designers to transform resources on-the-fly and to execute tasks with fewer ICs.