Future-proof your design

Today's embedded systems are becoming more and more complex, and engineers will encounter many challenges during design. A slight change in product requirements will lead to system redesign and directly affect the time to market, and the design risks brought by the innovation required to improve product competitiveness are increasing. However, it is difficult for existing MCUs to provide the required analog and digital matching reference designs. Cypress's latest PSoC4 solution can bring flash devices equivalent to field-programmable ASICs to embedded designs, without the impact of production cycles or one-time engineering costs (NRE). Based on the ARM Cortex-M0 core, PSoC4 tightly integrates configurable analog and digital circuits and on-chip microcontrollers, which not only reduces the number of components, but also solves the problem of engineers finding it difficult to start complex signal chain designs. Now, the first two series of Cypress PSoC 4 chips, PSoC 4100 and PSoC4200, have been mass-produced and listed. Compared with general-purpose MCUs, the many unique advantages of PSoC 4 have greatly broadened its application areas.

　　Freely define digital peripherals

　　PSoC 4 has created a new embedded system design model, integrating high-performance analog, programmable logic, memory, and microcontroller functions into a system-on-chip, simplifying the design process of embedded systems and shortening the time to market for final products. Inside PSoC4 (currently only supported by PSoC4200), there are up to 4 universal digital blocks (UDBs) containing a set of PLDs, 8-bit data channels, FIFOs, and ALUs. By using a library of more than 50 digital function components, unique and customizable peripherals can be easily created. In addition, two serial communication modules in the UDB can be freely configured as I2C, SPI, or UART, and can be reset to the required standard digital peripherals according to the system configuration.

　　Minimalistic analog signal chain design

　　The PSoC 4 series has integrated intelligent analog components, such as operational amplifiers, low-power comparators, and fast successive approximation ADCs integrated on the same chip, which can meet the market's demand for general-purpose 8-bit and 16-bit microcontrollers and can easily transition from a dedicated microcontroller platform to a powerful and flexible ARM platform. The implementation of this analog subsystem has no software overhead, can meet precision-level analog requirements, and is a truly hardware mixed-signal design independent of the MCU subsystem.

　　Low power consumption, low leakage current

　　In addition to additional processing power and enhanced digital modules, PSoC4 also has the best power consumption of about 150 nA, while keeping SRAM memory and programmable logic working, and being quickly awakened from interrupts. The power consumption in stop mode is about 20 nA, while maintaining the ability to wake up from I/O pins. The comparator in PSoC4 wakes up the device from Deep Sleep and Hibernate modes in just 25μS. In addition, PSoC 4 also has the widest operating voltage range of all Cortex-M0 devices, supporting all analog and digital operating voltages between 1.71V and 5.5V.

　　Equipped with leading capacitive touch solution

　　In addition to low cost, PSoC4 is also equipped with enhanced CapSense capacitive touch sensing function. CapSense is a capacitive touch technology accumulated by Cypress for nearly ten years, with multiple sensing detection methods and the best signal-to-noise ratio specifications, as well as super waterproof performance. PSoC perfectly combines ARM Cortex-M0, analog and digital architectures, and CapSense capacitive touch technology. Through graphical development methods, touch sensing can be achieved on each general pin. In particular, the automatic debugging module SmartSense achieves environmental adaptation by automatically adjusting the capacitance threshold of the touch screen, fundamentally solving the difference between laboratory modulation and actual application due to different environments.

　　A new design approach

　　PSoC 4 has dozens of PSoC components, which are "virtual chips" represented by icons in the Cypress PSoC Creator IDE. The combined price of these components can be as low as $1. Therefore, the new PSoC 4 architecture will challenge the current proprietary 8-bit and 16-bit microcontrollers (MCUs) and other 32-bit devices with a very high cost-effectiveness.

　　The PSoC Creator 2.2 integrated development environment (IDE) for Cypress's PSoC3 and PSoC5 architectures now also supports the new PSoC4 architecture. In addition to its powerful compiler and programmer, it allows users to configure PSoC programmable hardware into customized single-chip solutions. In the rich component library, there are more than 100 pre-verified analog and digital components that can be put into production directly. Users can drag and drop them into their designs and configure them according to various application requirements to achieve hardware and software co-design, create their own devices, ensure product differentiation and protect the corresponding intellectual property rights. Jiao Jian, product marketing manager of Cypress's programmable systems division, said that the first two series of PSoC4 devices, PSoC4100 and PSoC4200, are designed for low-end 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit embedded applications with high production volumes. This is also the industry's only embedded system-on-chip that integrates high-performance analog, programmable logic, memory and microcontrollers. "

　　PSoC 4 is designed to ensure that the design is fully future-proof. In addition, it supports firmware modifications at any point in the design process, even when the product is in the field. All PSoC 4 devices support dynamic reconfiguration, allowing designers to modify resources on the fly and use fewer ICs to complete tasks.