Cypress PSoC Designer™ 5.0 Accelerates Embedded Development and Time-to-Market by Combining Code-Free Design With Customization Capabilities

Integrates Original PSoC Designer and PSoC Express™ Tools, Enabling Designers To Start Projects in Code-Free Mode Then Flow Them into C Language for Fine-Tuning

San Jose, Calif., July 2008 -Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE: CY), today introduced PSoC Designer™ 5.0, the industry’s first and only integrated design environment that includes both code-free and high-level language programming modes in one package. Cypress has combined the revolutionary PSoC Express™ visual embedded system design tool with the full-featured PSoC Designer software to create a new design paradigm - users can now start projects in a drag-and-drop visual design mode (system-level view) and then move to code-based design in C language (chip-level view) to refine and customize their projects, all from within a single tool.

In addition to integrating the PSoC Express functionality, the new PSoC Designer 5.0 tool includes the more powerful version 9.61 of the HI-TECH C® PRO compiler for the PSoC® Mixed-Signal Array. The new compiler includes a new “Lite” mode that designers can use free of charge without any time or code-size limits usually associated with free compilers. Users can download PSoC Designer 5.0 free of charge at www.cypress.com/go/pr/psocdesigner.

“PSoC Designer offers the ability to customize designs in C code easily, while our PSoC Express users value the very fast design cycles,” said Jon Pearson, marketing director for PSoC Development Tools at Cypress.“ ”PSoC Designer 5.0 maintains the unique qualities of PSoC Express and lets designers seamlessly complete custom coding. It offers our customers the best of both worlds and keeps Cypress in the forefront of embedded design innovation"

PSoC Designer 5.0 also includes a plethora of upgrades focused on usability and ensuring embedded design engineers have the best tool, interface and components to quickly and easily complete the most complex designs while maximizing the efficiency of the target PSoC devices. Some of these enhancements include Graphical User Interface features based on familiar software best practices. For example, practically every window within the application can now be docked to the development workspace, hidden or exposed as needed through tabbed interfaces, or float as independent windows and effectively used in multiple-display environments.

About PSoC Designer
PSoC Designer (www.cypress.com/go/pr/psocdesigner) helps users harness the power and flexibility of PSoC devices. With two project design modes, system-level and chip-level, users can choose to do designs with no coding, with all coding, or any combination of the two.“ By operating at a higher level of abstraction and not requiring firmware development, a system-level project enables new designs to be created, simulated and programmed to the targeted PSoC device in hours or days instead of in weeks or months. A chip-level project provides the user with a catalog of peripheral functions (called ”user modules") that they can select, place and route to pins using flexible analog and digital PSoC block technology and then develop the firmware for a custom mixed-signal design. For a system-level project, PSoC Designer automatically generates the chip-level design information and all firmware, but also allows the user to add user modules and additional functions programmed in C language or assembly language.

This powerful, easy-to-use IDE comes with an extensive user module catalog, pre-configured, pre-characterized embedded peripheral functions, and extensive user assistance in the form of “help” dialog boxes, pull-down menus and other graphical user interface aids. User modules take the configurable PSoC devices and create useful functions as diverse as counters, timers and PWMs, analog converters, both ADCs and DACs, communications links like UARTs, SPI and I2C, as well as comparators, programmable gain blocks, filters and even bootloaders. Each user module includes the hardware configuration data, startup code, an interrupt service routine when applicable, and a set of APIs. These APIs, or application programming interface software functions, provide instant control of all aspects of the user module. This innovative approach helps the designer get to a fully functional custom device without weeks or months of tiresome datasheet scouring, tedious low-level coding and repetitive debugging.

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. They include up to 32 Kbytes of Flash memory, 2 Kbytes of SRAM, an 8x8 multiplier with 32-bit accumulator, power and sleep monitoring circuits, and hardware I2C communications.

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.

Easy to use development tools enable designers to select configurable library elements for analog functions such as amplifiers, ADCs, DACs, filters and comparators and digital functions such as timers, counters, PWMs, SPI and UARTs. The PSoC family’s analog features include rail-to-rail inputs, programmable gain amplifiers and up to 14-bit ADCs with exceptionally low noise, input leakage and voltage offset.

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. Customers can save as much as $10 in system costs. Learn more about PSoC products at www.cypress.com/psoc and receive free online training at www.cypress.com/psoctraining.