New PSoC® Solution for Fan Control Delivers Fast Customization, Highest Reliability and Support for 16 Independently Controlled Fans

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (Nasdaq:CY) today announced a fan control solution based on its PSoC^® 3 and PSoC 5 programmable system-on-chip families. The new solution is available free through PSoC Creator™ 2.0, Cypress’s Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 devices. The new fan control solution enables highly reliable, hardware-based fan control for the telecommunications, server and storage markets, where reliability is critical. The combination of the PSoC programmable digital fabric and graphical configuration tools enables customers to quickly customize a complete fan control solution with just a few lines of firmware code. More information is available at www.cypress.com/go/potm.

The fan control solution is available today for production PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 devices. It is easily implemented within the PSoC Creator 2.0 IDE, which provides a fan controller component with a graphical user interface that abstracts the design complexities. Customers simply enter the electromechanical parameters found in the fan datasheets into the graphical interface and the toolset takes care of the details. Further, the PSoC fan control solution uniquely provides a hardware-based fan control and speed-regulation capability built on top of the programmable digital architecture within the PSoC devices.

Other, firmware-based solutions are difficult to design due to the complexity of combining the firmware fan control algorithms with the I²C communication firmware. PSoC’s unique hardware based approach simply avoids this issue. These complications are further exacerbated in fan tray designs where 4-12 fans are common and independent control of each fan is desired.

The new fan control solution is available as a drop-in “component” from Cypress’s PSoC Creator™ 2.0 design software. Components are “virtual chips” represented by an icon in Cypress’s PSoC Creator software. They are “dragged and dropped” as component icons into PSoC Creator designs and integrate system interfaces and discrete ICs into PSoC designs. To minimize time-to-market, Cypress offers the PSoC Thermal Management Expansion Board Kit (CY8CKIT-036) specifically designed for fast development and prototyping of PSoC-based fan control systems.

The fan control solution is highlighted as the current PSoC Peripheral of the Month, a program designed to highlight applications and functions that standard MCUs can’t deliver, but PSoC can. Each peripheral will be presented with accompanying design support documents at www.cypress.com/go/potm. At the page, customers can learn more and download PSoC Creator free of charge and begin development of high-performance fan control applications immediately.

“Fan control is an area where PSoC shines brightly over other solutions,” said Jim Davis, Sr. Marketing Manager for Cypress’s PSoC Platform. “The graphical user interface gives PSoC customers a flexible solution that is easy to implement.”

Availability

The fan control component is available today in PSoC Creator 2.0, which users can download at www.cypress.com/go/psoccreator. More information on the solution is available at www.cypress.com/go/potm.

About PSoC 3 and PSoC 5

The new PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 architectures include high-precision programmable analog capability (up to 20-bit resolution for an Analog to Digital Converter) and expanded programmable digital resources integrated with powerful, industry-standard MCU cores and ample memory and communications peripherals. The PSoC 3 devices are based on a single cycle, high-performance 8-bit 8051 processor, while the PSoC 5 devices include a powerful 32-bit ARM Cortex™-M3 processor. The new products provide designers with a seamless, programmable design platform, enabling easy migration from 8 to 32 bits. The robust features of these new solutions dramatically expand the applications and markets that PSoC can address, including automotive, portable medical, industrial and many more. More information about PSoC products is available at www.cypress.com/psoc and free online training is at www.cypress.com/go/training.

About Cypress

Cypress delivers high-performance, mixed-signal, programmable solutions that provide customers with rapid time-to-market and exceptional system value. Cypress offerings include the flagship PSoC^® 1, PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 programmable system-on-chip families and derivatives, CapSense^® touch sensing and TrueTouch^® solutions for touchscreens. Cypress is the world leader in USB controllers, including the high-performance West Bridge^® solution that enhances connectivity and performance in multimedia handsets, PCs and tablets. Cypress is also the world leader in SRAM memories. Cypress serves numerous markets including consumer, mobile handsets, computation, data communications, automotive, industrial and military. Cypress trades on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol CY. Visit Cypress online at www.cypress.com.

Cypress, the Cypress logo, PSoC, PowerPSoC, CapSense and West Bridge are registered trademarks and PSoC Creator and TrueTouch are trademarks of Cypress Semiconductor Corp. All other trademarks are property of their owners.