Cypress Announces Advanced Availability of PSoC Creator2.0 Design Environment for PSoC3 and PSoC 5 Architectures

The new version also adds 11 new, pre-configured peripheral components that can easily be dropped into the schematic design canvas and combined into powerful systems. Behind the scenes, Cypress has updated PSoC Creator’s design routing functionality. The new, timing-driven routing enables customers to increase clock speed on many designs by 20 percent or more, and increases the effective capacity of the PSoC device. More information on PSoC Creator is available at www.cypress.com/go/psoccreator.

Cypress is making PSoC Creator 2.0 available to select, advanced customers prior to its general release in the fourth quarter. Customers can visit the Cypress Design Community site (www.cypress.com/go/community) for details on the early access program and to apply for a free license to the product. Users will also be selected from customers who register at Cypress’s booth # 400 at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston from September 26-27.

PSoC Creator is a revolutionary graphical design tool that allows the user to create powerful and unique new PSoC-based designs in minutes. It includes a rich library of dozens of fully tested and characterized analog and digital components that can be drag-and-dropped into a design and configured to suit a broad array of application requirements. The tool automatically places components into the PSoC device, routes all on-chip signals and directs I/O to the optimum pins. Each peripheral component is carefully parameterized so that the implementation is automatically optimized to fit the developer’s needs perfectly with no wasted resources. The build process generates a consistently-named set of APIs for each component that allows the software developer to control the hardware without knowing the underlying register set. Customized designs, and their associated APIs, can even be saved in a library for future reuse and easily shared within an organization.

The latest version of PSoC Creator offers 11 new peripherals, including S/PDIF for digital audio, Serial GPIO for hard disk drives, a fan controller, a voltage sequencer, and an external memory interface, among others. PSoC Creator now includes more than 80 analog and digital components in its portfolio. With new components being developed continuously, Cypress content is now organized into “component packs,” allowing new peripheral functionality to be released approximately every six without requiring users to update the tool itself.

“We’re excited to provide enhanced functionality and performance within PSoC Creator,” said Mark Saunders, Cypress’s senior marketing manager for PSoC Creator. “It’s truly a step ahead of any other embedded design environment, and we continue to make it better. We are also looking forward to lively discussions about the new features with our early access customers in the Cypress Design Community prior to the general release next quarter.”

About PSoC Creator
PSoC Creator is a unique design software enables engineers to design the way they think, using schematic-based design capture along with certified, pre-packaged peripherals to keep system creation independent of the target PSoC device. Instead of trawling through device documentation and memorizing register maps, users simply lay out the design, just as they would on paper or a whiteboard, and let the tool translate it into the PSoC configuration. With PSoC Creator, customers create designs according to application requirements, not the limitations of the target device. Re-targeting to new devices is as simple as rebuilding an application, so porting designs between PSoC devices becomes a snap, including migrating working designs seamlessly from 8- to 32-bit devices.

PSoC -- Because Change Happens
PSoC devices employ a highly configurable system-on-chip architecture for embedded control design, offering a flash-based equivalent of a field-programmable ASIC without lead-time or NRE penalties. PSoC devices integrate configurable analog and digital circuits, controlled by an on-chip microcontroller, providing both enhanced design revision capability and component count savings. A single PSoC device can integrate as many as 100 peripheral functions saving customers design time, board space and power consumption while improving system quality and reducing system cost.

The flexible PSoC resources allow designers to future-proof their products by enabling firmware-based changes during design, validation, production, and in the field. The unique PSoC flexibility shortens design cycle time and allows for late-breaking feature enhancements. All PSoC devices are also dynamically reconfigurable, enabling designers to morph internal resources on-the-fly, utilizing fewer components to perform a given task.