Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NASDAQ: CY) today announced that the
editors of Embedded Computing Design magazine have named
Cypress’s TrueTouch®
Gen4 touchscreen controller family an Editor’s
Choice Product. The family delivers multiple new differentiating
features, including the world’s best tracking of gloved fingers on
capacitive touchscreens. Gen4 enables accurate navigation of
touchscreens even with thick gloves on, greatly improving convenience
for users of smartphones and other portable electronics.
The Gen4 family also offers new passive stylus support, to capture
handwriting and signatures accurately, and proximity detection, which
senses an object approaching the touchscreen and powers down the display
before contact to avoid accidental touches. The capacitive-sensing based
proximity detection feature eliminates the need for infrared (IR)
sensors and provides significant cost savings. These advanced features
supplement Gen4’s best-in-class water rejection and seamless operation
in noisy environments. Video demonstrations of the glove tracking,
passive stylus, and proximity sensing capabilities are available at www.cypress.com/touch.
“We chose the Gen4 touchscreen controller as an Editor’s Choice Product
for its ability to simplify interaction with portable electronic systems
and smartphones in a variety of conditions via glove tracking and other
features,” said Warren Webb, Editorial Director at Embedded Computing
Design.
“This recognition by the editors of Embedded Computing Design
echoes the validation of these new touchscreen features that we are
receiving from the world’s leading smartphone manufacturers,” said John
Carey, Senior Director of TrueTouch Marketing at Cypress. “Gloved finger
tracking, passive stylus support and proximity face detection deliver a
better user experience and enable our customers to directly address
end-user concerns.”
The Gen4 TMA467 controller tracks up to 10 fingers in thin gloves and
two fingers with thicker gloves, such as those used by skiers. It
delivers best-in-class accuracy and linearity for gloves of different
materials and thicknesses. It automatically switches between glove and
finger tracking without any intervention.
The Gen4 TMA468 controller supports passive styli with tips as small as
2 mm, enabling touchscreens to capture characters as small as 7 mm. This
capability is important for writing in languages that require enhanced
character recognition for reliable text input, such as Chinese and
Japanese. The controller delivers a high degree of accuracy and
linearity, along with the fast refresh rates required for handwriting
and signature capture.
The Gen4 TMA466 controller’s proximity sensing detects objects such as a
user’s face up to 25 mm away from the screen and disables detection when
a user is on a call in case their face touches the screen. It also
instructs the host to turn off the display to save power and prolong
battery life. This eliminates the need for standalone IR proximity
sensors and reduces system costs.
The Gen4 family delivers an array of technologies that competing
solutions cannot match. Gen4 utilizes Cypress’s patented DualSense™
technology to execute both self-capacitance and mutual-capacitance
measurements in the same device, and switch dynamically between the two
in application. This ability enables glove tracking, stylus support, and
face detection features, as well as TrueTouch’s unrivaled water
rejection capability.
Gen4 is the world’s only controller family with a built-in 10V
transmitter to drive the touch panel at 10V. Because signal-to-noise
ratio (SNR) is directly proportional to the voltage at which the panel
is driven, this technology allows Gen4 solutions to sense smaller
signals than competitors in the presence of high noise sources,
eliminating disruptions in performance. Gen4 controls touchscreens up to
6 inches in smartphones, superphones, digital cameras, and media
players, and touchscreens up to 10.1 inches in e-readers and tablets.
About TrueTouch
Cypress’s TrueTouch technology provides the industry’s best noise
immunity, highest SNR, fastest refresh rates, lowest power consumption,
and world’s best accuracy and linearity. The flexible TrueTouch solution
allows customers to rapidly develop leading-edge solutions without
having to buy turnkey modules. They have a choice of using touch sensors
(glass or film) and LCDs from preferred partners, and can develop
innovative mechanical designs ranging from flat to curved surfaces of
varying thickness. In addition, TrueTouch devices offer Cypress’s
legendary noise immunity with patented capacitive sensing technology
that enables flawless operation in noisy RF and LCD environments.
Additional TrueTouch information is available at touch.cypress.com.
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 a 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, TrueTouch, PSoC, and CapSense are registered
trademarks and DualSense is a trademark of Cypress Semiconductor Corp.
All other trademarks are property of their owners.
Copyright Business Wire 2013