Cypress, Sona College of Technology to set up new PSoC laboratory

SALEM, INDIA: Cypress Semiconductor Corp. and Sona College of Technology (Sona Tech) of Salem, Tamil Nadu, India recently have agreed to set up a joint PSoC programmable system-on-chip laboratory at Sona Tech.

The agreement was signed at Sona Tech by Pashupathy Gopalan, Vice President of Strategic Marketing and Corporate Business Development at Cypress and A. Dhirajlal, Secretary of Sona Tech.

As part of the agreement, Cypress will provide hands-on training sessions for the faculty and students of Sona Tech, in addition to free hardware and software tools. Sona Tech will provide the facilities for the laboratory.

The laboratory will expose the students to the PSoC platform, a flexible family of devices with programmable analogue and digital blocks integrated with an MCU. With its unique architecture, PSoC provides an unrivaled learning platform for embedded design students. The lab will also be made available for training activities held by Cypress and Sona Tech to train other universities and companies.

Sona Tech will incorporate PSoC solutions in the microcontroller/microprocessor, digital design, and analog design curriculum and research projects. Sona Tech will also encourage students to participate in PSoC design contests held by Cypress.

“This new PSoC laboratory, which Cypress is graciously collaborating with us on, demonstrates Sona Tech’s commitment to bring established and emerging technologies to our engineering students,” said Dhirajlal. “The PSoC platform offers a powerful development environment to learn practical design skills that our students will bring with them into their careers.”

“This agreement helps Cypress continue to build its presence with the growing, talented foundation of engineers in India,” said Gopalan. “This new lab will familiarize Sona Tech students with the flexibility and integration delivered by the PSoC platform. We are confident that the ease-of-use and versatility of PSoC will lead many new designers to leverage the technology as customers.”

“The Cypress University Alliance is focused on expanding knowledge of the PSoC embedded design platform with students and faculty at the world’s leading universities,” said Patrick Kane, director of the Cypress University Alliance. “Sona Tech is an outstanding addition to the list of world-class universities using PSoC.”

Sona College of Technology
Sona College of Technology is synonymous with academic excellence, adorning the steel city, Salem, in Tamil Nadu. Affiliated to Anna University and approved by AICTE, the college offers quality education and technical competencies on the strong foundation of values, ideals and rich culture to the students across the country and beyond.

Located in arcadian environs at the heart of the city, the college is equipped with world class infrastructure and highly qualified and experienced faculty members. An active Placement Training and Welfare Cell is functioning with full enthusiasm with the aim of placing the students in top-notch companies.

‘Out Look’, has ranked Sona Tech in 27th position among the top 35 Self Financing Engineering Colleges in India and Anna University has ranked this renowned institution in 10th position among 242 Engineering Colleges in Tamil Nadu. The Sona College of Technology website is www.sonatech.ac.in/.

PSoC: Because change happens
PSoC devices employ a highly configurable system-on-chip architecture for embedded control design. PSoC devices integrate configurable analog and digital circuits, controlled by an on-chip microcontroller, providing both enhanced design revision capability and component count savings.

They include up to 32 Kbytes of Flash memory, 2 Kbytes of SRAM, an 8x8 multiplier with 32-bit accumulator, power and sleep monitoring circuits, and hardware I2C communications.

The flexible PSoC resources allow designers to future-proof their products by enabling firmware-based changes during design, validation, production, and in the field. The unique PSoC flexibility shortens design cycle time and allows for late-breaking feature enhancements. All PSoC devices are also dynamically reconfigurable, enabling designers to morph internal resources on-the-fly, utilizing fewer components to perform a given task.

A single PSoC device can integrate as many as 100 peripheral functions, saving customers design time, board space and power consumption while improving system quality. Customers can save as much as $10 in system costs.

Cypress's University Alliance Program is a multifaceted program empowering electronics engineering and computer science students to develop the skill sets needed to perform in today's marketplace. The program mounts regional design competitions, offers academic workshops, and maintains a university alliance website (www.cypress.com/cua) which provides access to myriad free design resources, evaluation boards and online courses.