IDT Expands Capacitive Touch Product Portfolio

New Touch Controllers Provide Ultra-Low Power Consumption and Faster Time- to-Market.

SAN JOSE, Calif.– IDT® (Integrated Device Technology, Inc.; NASDAQ: IDTI), a leading provider of essential mixed signal semiconductor solutions that enrich the digital media experience, today announced the newest members of the IDT PureTouchTM family of capacitive touch devices — the first devices announced since IDT acquired the technology in June, 2009. Targeting computing, white goods and portable devices, the PureTouch technology can be implemented through button, slider and scroll options. By incorporating new features, the latest touch controllers help designers improve product differentiation and time-to-market with easy customization and simple system design.

Following the IDT Power Smart initiative, the LDS6100 touch controller family is optimized for ultra-low power consumption and enables power-efficient continuous scan of buttons without sleep modes, making the LDS6100 an ideal solution for battery-driven portable applications. In continuous scan mode, the LDS6100 consumes only 125uW, 15 percent lower than the current product family. With wide voltage range support (1.8V to 5.5V DC), no external voltage converter is required for non-portable applications.

The IDT LDS6100 family of devices offers support for a variety of industry standard interfaces, including I2C, SPI and SMBus. These interfaces span the requirements of most applications, ranging from PCs to mobile devices. Furthermore, the integrated LED drivers in the LDS6100 family allow automatic, instant visual feedback when a touch occurs with built-in lighting options, such as dimming, blinking and heartbeat-like effects. This implementation helps simplify the design by relieving the host processor from having to manually activate the LED drivers and eliminating the need for software-generated lighting effects.

The LDS6100 also features Direct Communication Mode (DCM), which assigns a status pin to each capacitive sensor, enabling touch buttons to perform like mechanical buttons, simplifying implementation in white goods applications, such as refrigerators and dishwashers.

“Consumers are demanding touch interfaces in a wide variety of devices because of their ease of use, intuitive interface and stylish look. This future growth opportunity makes it an exciting industry to be part of,” said Alvin Wong, general manager of the IDT Advanced User Interface group. “The highly integrated IDT PureTouch family of devices reduces component count, cuts design complexity and cost, and enables faster product development. The additional features of our latest touch controllers demonstrate the IDT commitment to enhancing the digital media experience through continued innovation.”
Pricing and Availability
The new devices are currently sampling and are available at $0.85 for 10,000 units and are available in a variety of package options, ranging from 28-pin to 40-pin including QFN and SSOP. Evaluation and development kits will be available for testing, analysis and system emulation. Each kit consists of an evaluation tuning board, sample sensor board, and a software interface for optimizing PureTouch controller configuration with a customer’s unique sensor board. For additional information, visit www.IDT.com/go/touch.