Cypress Qualifies PSoC(TM) Mixed Signal Array in High-Volume Minnesota Fab 4; New Source of Supply to Meet Rapidly Growing PSoC Demand.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE:CY) today announced that it has qualified production of its Programmable System-on-Chip(TM) (PSoC(TM)) mixed-signal array technology in the company's high-volume Fab 4 production facility in Bloomington, Minnesota in response to significant increases in demand for PSoC products in industrial, computing, networking and consumer electronics applications. The first qualified product, the CY8C21x34, is in high demand for a variety of applications, including capacitive touch sensing interfaces using Cypress's CapSense(TM) technology. Production shipments of the device from Fab 4 are scheduled to begin this month.

In addition to the qualification of PSoC production in the Fab 4 facility, Cypress has expanded capacity in its Fab 2 in Round Rock, Texas, where all PSoC manufacturing previously took place.

"Strong PSoC growth in industrial control and computation applications has been compounded in the past two quarters by a very steep acceleration in demand for PSoC products in handheld consumer product," said George Saul, vice president of Cypress's PSoC Business Unit. "The rapid qualification of this additional supply source by our Fab teams in Minnesota and Texas allows us to support this increasing global demand."

About the PSoC Family

PSoC devices are configurable mixed signal arrays that integrate a fast 8-bit microcontroller with many peripheral functions typically found in an embedded design. PSoC devices provide the advantages of an ASIC without the ASIC NRE or turn-around time. A single PSoC device can integrate as many as 100 peripheral functions with a microcontroller, saving customers design time, board space and power consumption. Customers can save from 5 cents to as much as $10 in system costs. Easy to use development tools enable designers to select configurable 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. 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. PSoC devices include up to 32KB of Flash memory, 2KB of SRAM, an 8x8 multiplier with 32-bit accumulator, power and sleep monitoring circuits, and hardware I2C communications.

All PSoC devices are dynamically reconfigurable, enabling designers to create new system functions on-the-fly. Designers can achieve more than 120 percent utilization of the die in many cases, by reconfiguring the same silicon for different functions at different times. In the automotive PSoC LIN bus reference design, the same digital blocks are reconfigured 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 CapSense

With Cypress's CapSense capacitive touch sensor interface, a finger on the interface forms an electrical connection with embedded sensors, which work with the PSoC device to translate data about the finger's position into various system control functions. A single PSoC device can replace dozens of mechanical switches and controls with simple, touch-sensitive controls. CapSense-based "button" and slider controls are more reliable than their mechanical counterparts because they are not prone to the environmental wear-and-tear that affects exposed buttons and switches.

Cypress's CapSense solution offers system designers numerous advantages over capacitive touch sensor products built around modules and sub-assemblies, including increased flexibility, reduced board space and lower cost. Because of the unique PSoC architecture, designers can easily integrate multiple functions (e.g., LED drivers and LCD displays), in addition to touch sensing. The PSoC CapSense solution also delivers benefits such as easy serial communications using either I2C or SPI interfaces, the ability to implement both trackpad (x-y matrix) and linear slider applications with the same device, and the ability to make quick design changes using the flash-based PSoC architecture.

Software and Support

PSoC Designer(TM), the traditional software development environment for PSoC, is a full-featured, GUI-based design tool suite that enables the user to configure design-in silicon with simple point and click options. With PSoC Designer, users can code the MCU in either C or assembly language; and debug the design using sophisticated features such as event triggers and multiple break points, while single-stepping through code in C or assembly or a mix of the two.

Complementing PSoC Designer is the new CY3215-DK Professional Class Development Kit, which includes a tiny high-speed in-circuit USB 2.0, based emulator with a large trace buffer, and seamlessly integrates with PSoC Designer and the user's development board. The development kit includes everything necessary to complete a design with the PSoC family of ICs. The tools are designed for ease of use, to support all the advanced PSoC packages and to keep the cost of development to a minimum while providing all the features found in tools that cost $2,500 or more. The CY3215-DK is priced at $599 (suggested resale).

In March of this year, Cypress introduced PSoC Express(TM), the first visual embedded development tool that allows microcontroller-based design development without Assembly language or C programming. By operating at a higher level of abstraction and eliminating required firmware development, PSoC Express enables designs to be created, simulated and programmed to targeted PSoC devices in hours or days instead of weeks or months. PSoC Express includes an application generation engine and includes an input/output device catalog and communication protocols like I2C and RS232, all of which are combined visually by the designer to build custom solutions. Both PSoC Express and PSoC Designer can be downloaded free of charge from the Cypress web site at www.cypress.com/psocexpress.

About Cypress

Cypress solutions are at the heart of any system that is built to perform: consumer, computation, data communications, automotive, industrial, and solar power. Leveraging a strong commitment to customer service and performance-based process and manufacturing expertise, Cypress's product portfolio includes a broad selection of wired and wireless USB devices, CMOS image sensors, timing solutions, network search engines, specialty memories, high-bandwidth synchronous and micropower memory products, optical solutions, and reconfigurable mixed-signal arrays. Cypress stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol CY. More information about the company is available online at www.cypress.com.

Cypress and the Cypress logo are registered trademarks, and "Programmable System of Chip," PSoC, CapSense, PSoC Designer and PSoC Express are trademarks of Cypress Semiconductor Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.