News and New Products

Microcontroller-based SOC marries wireless and configurable-analog capabilities

By Maury Wright -- EDN, 5/25/2005

For the past few years, Cypress has touted two product families that it is now integrating in the PRoC (Programmable Radio-on-a-Chip) family. PRoC devices will include both the 2.4-GHz wireless radio that Cypress offers in its WirelessUSB family and the microcontroller-based PSOC (programmable system-on-chip) that includes flexible analog capabilities, such as data converters and filters. The first PRoC offering will sell for as little as $3.50 (high volume). It offers 8 kbytes of flash memory, 512 bytes of SRAM, and a mixed-signal array with four programmable analog blocks and four programmable digital blocks.

Cypress has succeeded in selling the WirelessUSB family into a variety of HID (human-interface-device) applications, such as wireless keyboards and remote controls. The company believes that the PRoC family can implement such products and serve even in higher-performance roles. For instance, Cypress projects the use of PRoC in high-end home remote controls and in remote-controlled toy planes and cars. Any number of industrial-control and -automation applications might also prove apt targets.

Cypress officials believe that WirelessUSB offers a simpler and cheaper alternative to technologies such as Zigbee in control applications. WirelessUSB lacks the complex Zigbee software stack and mesh-network capability. But WirelessUSB can connect devices at distances of 10 to 50m, and configuring the nodes of a network require only that the designer place two devices directly next to one another, so that the Cypress Kissbind technology can establish the wireless associations. The company will also offer development tools and reference boards to support designs customers base on the chip.

Cypress Semiconductor Corp, www.cypress.com.