Acer selects Cypress's PSoC CapSense for media console in Aspire notebook PCs

SAN JOSE, USA: Cypress Semiconductor Corp. announced that Acer has selected its PSoC CapSense touch sensing solution for its striking new Aspire 4935G/4937G notebook computers in Asia and Aspire 8935/5935 notebooks in the Americas.

Acer was able to use a single CapSense device in a tiny 32-QFN package to control the complete suite of media functions available on the new laptops. No competitive solutions were able to accommodate all the necessary functions in a single chip.

The programmable CapSense architecture enabled Acer to create the innovative media consoles and then customize them for separate markets and models using the same CapSense device. This saved design time and reduced inventory requirements.

The single device manages seven buttons, a five-segment slider and 14 LEDs, all in a tiny 32-QFN package, allowing Acer to optimize board-space usage. The CapSense solution also allows designers to make last-minute changes, add features and control additional functions beyond the capacitive touch interface — capabilities that are not available from other capacitive sensing products.

“This is another important design win with a premier notebook provider,” said Dhwani Vyas, vice president of Cypress’s User Interface Business Unit. “Acer selected CapSense last year, and with this year’s more aggressive design objectives, CapSense again was the best solution. We continue to gain momentum as the user interface of choice for new computer models.”

“We are pleased that Cypress was able to integrate our aggressive feature list in a single chip with a very small package,” said Johnny Shyy, Director of Notebook Product Management, for Acer. “One of the factors that differentiate the Aspire notebooks from the competition is the intuitive and stylish user interface. Cypress’s CapSense solution is a major part of this success.”

CapSense
Cypress's CapSense Touch-Sensing solution has replaced 2.5 billion mechanical buttons in mobile handsets, laptops, consumer electronics, white goods, automotive applications, and virtually any system that has a mechanical button or switch, making Cypress the industry touch-sensing leader.

The CapSense portfolio, the industry's broadest and most integrated, enhances industrial design and reliability with the most noise-immune and water tolerant capacitive touch-sensing interfaces, including proximity sensing where direct touch is not required. CapSense proximity sensing, with its industry leading detection range up to 25 cm, provides power savings by activating an interface only when needed while further enhancing industrial designs by only exposing interfaces when necessary.

Based on the PSoC programmable system-on-chip architecture and the PSoC Designer Embedded-System Design Tool, users complete CapSense designs quickly and easily using pre-configured and verified "user modules" and real-time sensor tuning and monitoring.