Cypress announces latest release of PSoC Creator IDE

SAN JOSE, USA: Cypress Semiconductor Corp. has announced new features for its revolutionary PSoC Creator Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 programmable system-on-chip families.

PSoC Creator now supports enhanced low-power design techniques, new LCD design capabilities and faster, easier CapSense capacitive sensing design.

PSoC Creator combines a state-of-the-art software development IDE with a revolutionary graphical design editor to form a uniquely powerful hardware/software co-design environment. It provides a rich library of dozens of pre-configured analog and digital peripherals that can easily be dropped into the schematic design canvas and combined into powerful systems.

The tool automatically places components into the PSoC device, routes all on-chip signals and directs I/O to the optimum pins. Each peripheral component is carefully parameterized so that the implementation is automatically optimized to fit the developer’s needs perfectly with no wasted resources.

The build process generates a consistent, easily remembered set of APIs for each component that allows the software developer to control the hardware without worrying about the underlying implementation. Customized designs, and their associated APIs, can even be saved in a library for future reuse and easily shared within an organization.

The latest version of PSoC Creator improves support for very low power designs with per-component control over sleep and hibernate behavior, allowing designers to selectively reduce power to certain parts of the chip without having to impact performance. It also introduces two powerful new LCD graphics components; one that communicates with the LCD panel via the popular i8080 interface and another that controls the panel directly, driving the control signals and managing the frame buffer in an external SRAM.

In addition, PSoC Creator adds Cypress’s unique SmartSense algorithm to provide on-the-fly calibration of CapSense applications, resulting in end-products that are easier to manufacture and perform better.

Cypress also offers fully functional, free compilers with no code size limitations for both the PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 device families. The Keil PK51 Professional Developer’s Kit for PSoC 3 and the CodeSourcery Sourcery G++™ Lite Edition for PSoC 5 are both bundled with the PSoC Creator distribution.

PSoC Creator also includes a built-in debugger to support the on-chip JTAG and serial wire debug functionality provided in all PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 devices. Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS) supported include Keil RTX51 Tiny, Micrium µC/OS-III, and SEGGER embOS.

“Our customers tell us every day that PSoC Creator represents the future of embedded design,” said Gahan Richardson, vice president of PSoC Products for Cypress. “These features make designing easier and more powerful for engineers, and we’re actively developing a steady stream of new components and enhancements to PSoC Creator that reduce our customers’ time-to-market.”