Cypress Qualifies its PSoC Mixed-Signal Array for Automotive Applications

– Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE: CY) today announced that Cypress’s CY8C24xxx and CY8C27xxx families of Programmable System-on-ChipTM (PSoCTM) mixed-signal arrays have met the standards of the Automotive Electronics Council (AEC)—made up of leading automotive manufacturers—for automotive applications operating up to 125ºC. The AEC Component Technical Committee is the standardization body for establishing standards for reliable, high quality electronic components.

“We are very pleased that PSoC has met AEC’s standards of reliability in the demanding automotive environment,” said George Saul, CEO of Cypress MicroSystems. “Today’s cars are extremely complex electronic systems on wheels. PSoC’s strength is its ability to integrate analog and digital peripheral functions with a microcontroller – all on one chip. PSoC mixed signal integration reduces component count and system cost and, most importantly, improves system reliability. Cypress has already achieved a number of PSoC automotive design wins in power train and body electronics, as well as safety, security and infotainment systems. Using PSoC in conjunction with Cypress’s USB, WirelessUSBTM, SRAM and CMOS image sensor products, Cypress will roll out a new generation of sophisticated automotive applications.”

Cypress will demonstrate several PSoC automotive applications at Electronica 2004 in Munich from November 9-12. Demonstrations will include:

• <>Electroluminescent Backlight Instrument Panel Reference Design>
• Digital Compass Reference Design
• Capacitive Sensor Reference Design
• A LIN 2.0 Evaluation Board

At Electronica Cypress’s automotive experts will discuss their roadmap and plans for LIN and CAN bus support; using USB and WirelessUSB for entertainment console applications; using CMOS image sensors for lane tracking and obstacle detection; and using SunPower solar cells in sunroofs. Look for Cypress in Hall A4 booth 207.

About the PSoC Family

A true system-on-a-chip, PSoC devices are configurable mixed signal arrays that integrate the microcontroller and related peripheral circuits typically found in an embedded design. This mixed signal integration allows customers to significantly reduce the number of components they have to use, greatly improving system quality and reliability and drastically lowering bill of materials. Employing easy to use development tools, designers select configurable, pre-characterized library elements to provide analog functions such as amplifiers, ADCs, DACs, filters and comparators and digital functions such as timers, counters, PWMs, SPI and UARTs. PSoC analog performance is instrumentation-quality – including rail-to-rail inputs, programmable gain, 14-bit ADCs and exceptionally low noise and input leakage and voltage offset.

In addition to these configurable analog and digital blocks, PSoC devices include a fast 8-bit microcontroller, up to 32KB of Flash memory, 2KB of SRAM, an 8x8 multiplier with 32-bit accumulator, power and sleep monitoring circuits, a precision real time clock and hardware I2C communications. All PSoC family members are compatible and users can seamlessly migrate their existing designs between devices with minimal effort.

All PSoC devices are dynamically reconfigurable, enabling designers to create new system functions on-the-fly. Re-configuring the same silicon for different functions on different clock cycles, designers can achieve more than 120 percent utilization of the die in many cases. In the automotive PSoC LIN bus reference design, the same transistors are re-configured four times to support the different LIN communication modes; in doing so, these blocks consume less than 10 percent of PSoC hardware resources and less than 10 percent of the PSoC MCU cycles.

About the AEC

The Automotive Electronics Council (AEC) was originally established by Chrysler, Ford, and GM for the purpose of establishing common part-qualification and quality-system standards. From its inception, the AEC has consisted of two Committees: the Quality Systems Committee and the Component Technical Committee. Today, the committees are composed of representatives from the sustaining members Delphi Corporation, Siemens VDO Corporation and Visteon Corporation, and other associate members.

The AEC Component Technical Committee is the standardization body for establishing standards for reliable, high quality electronic components. Components meeting these specifications are suitable for use in the harsh automotive environment without additional component-level qualification testing. More information about the AEC is accessible online at http://www.aecouncil.com/.

About Cypress:

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE: CY) is Connecting from Last Mile to First Mile™ with high-performance solutions for personal, network access, enterprise, metro switch and core communications-system applications. Cypress Connects™ using wireless, wireline, digital, and optical transmission standards, including USB, Fibre Channel, SONET/SDH, Gigabit Ethernet and DWDM. Leveraging its process and system-level expertise, Cypress makes industry-leading physical layer devices, framers and network search engines, along with a broad portfolio of high-bandwidth memories, timing technology solutions and reconfigurable mixed-signal arrays. More information about Cypress is accessible online at http://www.cypress.com.

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