Semiconductor Industry News Names Cypress's PSoC® 4 Architecture Semiconductor of the Year

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NASDAQ: CY) today announced that Semiconductor Industry News has given Cypress’s new PSoC® 4 programmable system-on-chip architecture the publication’s 19th annual “Semiconductor of the Year” award. The publication’s editors nominated over 100 products from the thousands of products announced this past year, and they selected the winners based on innovative design, volume production structure, impact on society and overall potential. The editors chose PSoC 4 for its unique programmable, mixed-signal SoC architecture, and based on PSoC’s track record of success in a variety of markets, including consumer and automotive.

The PSoC 4 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. The truly scalable, cost-efficient architecture delivers PSoC’s trademark flexibility, analog performance and integration, along with access to dozens of free PSoC Components™—“virtual chips” represented by icons in Cypress’s PSoC Creator™ integrated design environment (IDE). The new PSoC 4 device class will challenge proprietary 8-bit and 16-bit microcontrollers (MCUs), along with other 32-bit devices. For more information, visit www.cypress.com/go/psoc4.

“Congratulations to Cypress on receiving the Semiconductor of the Year award,” said Wataru Izumiya, President of Sangyo Times, Inc., the publisher of Semiconductor Industry News. “Our journalists who cover the latest trends in the semiconductor and IT industries everyday gave Cypress’s PSoC 4 very high commendations for its unique features and ability to enable a broad range of applications. PSoC 4 is truly a revolutionary device that symbolizes a new era of flexibility in design. We look forward to watching the future development of Cypress and PSoC.”

“It is a tremendous honor to have the knowledgeable editors of Semiconductor Industry News single out PSoC 4 as Semiconductor of the Year from the many products they reviewed,” said Bruce Weyer, Senior Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Cypress. “PSoC 4 starts with PSoC’s hallmark flexibility, programmable analog and digital resources, and ability to integrate numerous functions, but it takes PSoC to a new level. PSoC 4 leverages its ARM Cortex-M0 core, low power, and low cost, to reach expansive new markets with a simple migration path for existing 8- and 16-bit designs to a single 32-bit platform.”

Cypress recently announced the first two product families from its PSoC 4 architecture: the PSoC 4100 and PSoC 4200 families. The PSoC 4100 family, the lowest-cost ARM-based PSoC, brings PSoC flexibility and integration to cost-sensitive, high-volume applications. The PSoC 4200 family features faster processor and ADC sampling speeds and PLD-based enhanced universal digital blocks (UDBs). In addition to capacitive sensing applications, PSoC 4 targets field-oriented control (FOC) motor control, temperature sensing, security access, portable medical, and many others.

The PSoC 4 architecture offers best-in-class power leakage of 150 nA while retaining SRAM memory, programmable logic, and the ability to wake up from an interrupt. In stop mode, it consumes only 20 nA while maintaining wake-up capability. It has the widest operating voltage range of any Cortex-M0-based device, enabling full analog and digital operation from 1.71V to 5.5V. The architecture facilitates integrated, high-performance custom signal chains and provides both configurable analog and flexible routing.

PSoC 4 leverages the PSoC Creator IDE and its easy-to-use graphical interface. The IDE enables designers to drag and drop pre-characterized, production-ready analog and digital IP blocks—PSoC Components—into a single PSoC device to create customized, feature-rich, and highly differentiated end products. Cypress’s platform solution—PSoC 4, PSoC Creator and PSoC Components—simplifies and accelerates the design process, reduces bills of material, and provides extraordinary system value. PSoC Creator is available for free at www.cypress.com/go/psoccreator.

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. For more information, please visit www.cypress.com/psoc. Free online training is available at www.cypress.com/psoctraining.

About Cypress

Cypress delivers high-performance, mixed-signal, programmable solutions that provide customers with rapid time-to-market and exceptional system value. Cypress offerings include the flagship PSoC 1, PSoC 3, PSoC 4, and PSoC 5 programmable system-on-chip families. Cypress is the world leader in capacitive user interface solutions including CapSense touch sensing, TrueTouch® touchscreens, and trackpad solutions for notebook PCs and peripherals. Cypress is the world leader in USB controllers, which enhance connectivity and performance in a wide range of consumer and industrial products. Cypress is also the world leader in SRAM and nonvolatile RAM memories. Cypress serves numerous major markets, including consumer, mobile handsets, computation, data communications, automotive, industrial, and military. Cypress trades on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the ticker symbol CY. Visit Cypress online at www.cypress.com.

Cypress, the Cypress logo, PSoC, CapSense, and TrueTouch are registered trademarks and PSoC Components and PSoC Creator are trademarks of Cypress Semiconductor Corp. All other trademarks are property of their owners.