Happy New Year of Rabbit!!

I have been not been a good blogger in the past few month, instead I have been a blog blocker. Now I am back, and back with exciting news:

The PSoC 3 is in full production NOW.

You can order or sample the following 11 marketing part numbers on www.cypress.com/go/psoc. The rest of the part numbers will be open in the next few month by stages.

11 x parts for a new year of 2011!!

Here are some treats for our PSoC fans: We have series of training modules for PSoC development software: PSoC Designer (PSoC 1) and PSoC Creator (PSoC 3 and PSoC 5).

PSoC Designer On-Demand Training Series

PSoC Designer 101: Intro to PSoC Designer
Description: This is a web-based course that provides an overview of the PSoC Mixed-Signal Array and its Design Tools. It is the first of a multi-part series of modules designed to provide you with the necessary training to enable you to quickly take advantage of PSoC Technology, develop your embedded applications and get to market fast. It also introduces you to PSoC Designer using three basic example projects and the PSoC FirstTouch Starter Kit.

PSoC Designer 210: Chip-Level Designs
Description: This is part of a series of web based courses designed to provide the necessary training to enable you to quickly take advantage of PSoC technology, to develop your embedded application, and get to market faster. This module will take you deep into various types of PSoC Designer datasheets, show you how to optimize designs with flexible routing resources and show you various PSoC design considerations in PSoC Designer’s chip-level view using an example project and the CY3210-PSoCEval1 Kit.

PSoC Designer Module 3: Debugging with PSoC
This module introduces the powerful PSoC Designer debugging tools that can save you hours in the troubleshooting process. This module goes over features such as trace buffers, watch variables, and breakpoints. The last part of the module also walks you through debugging of a real project. PSoC Designer and the PSoC In-Circuit Emulator or ICE is required for the project.

PSoC Designer Module 4: Dynamic Reconfiguration
This module first looks in detail at the register map and configuration files used with PSoC User Modules. Then, the course  walks through how to implement dynamic reconfiguration which allows you to reuse resources in PSoC by reconfiguring PSoC on-the-fly to perform a new function.

Component Development Training For PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 using PSoC Creator

PSoC Creator 110: Schematic Components
PSoC Creator 111: Component Parameters
PSoC Creator 112: Intro to Component API Generation
PSoC Creator 113: PLD Based Verilog Components
PSoC Creator: Custom Components

Several months ago, I worked on a project that involves analysis on the SAR ADC architecture, which got me obsessed on the various implementation from different vendors. I enjoy calculating the single and multiple channle converstion time for diffrent resolution settings for hours. Then one night, I had a dream about the SAR ADC.

Yes, as much odd as it sounds, I did dream of it. When I woke up, all I remember is that some thing about the SAR upset me for big time. I even held fists full of emotions in my dream. Insanity? Yes. Stuff like that definitely put me out of 3 sigma in the normal human being behavior statistics, but the good side is that dream inspired me to team up with our senior apps engineer Andrew Siska to write this article: "Golden Gloves" A/D Converter Match: Successive-approximation register vs. sigma-delta topology":

In one corner, the current champion successive-approximation register (SAR) analog/digital converter (ADC); in the opposing corner, a relative newcomer to the A/D conversion scene, the sigma-delta (ΣΔ) ADC. This will be a seven-round fight to the finish, with judges awarding points in the following categories:

   1. Conversion Accuracy
   2. Speed of Conversion
   3. Linearity of Strikes
   4. Conversion Accuracy in the Low and High Side Corners
   5. Differential Non Linearity
   6. Integral Non Linearity
   7. Quantization Error

...

You can access the full article at here.

CY8C22xxx/21x45 is our new CapSensePLUS PSoC 1 family that target at both industrial and automotive grade application. With 2 parallel CapSense® touch-sensing channels, the new PSoC devices can process twice as much input data at any general purpose I/O pins at the same scanning interval.

How to set up the parameters in the CSD2x user module to achieve the optimal performance. The following flowchart shows the steps to be performed for calibrating CSD2X in PSoC Designer, courtesy from Bob Hu, application engineer at our Shanghai office:

http://www.eefocus.com/

My colleague Patrick Kane (link to blog) sent me this website link and I was blown away. The information carried in this site is tremendous. There are blogs, communites, news, ebooks, supplier list, forums, etc. The topics ranges from semiconductor technology to the latest trend in end equipments. Cypress just annouced the result of PSoC Community Innovation Design Compeititon Program: link. There have been hundreds of designs submitted. The reward for winners is our CY8CKIT-003 PSoC® 3 FirstTouch™ Starter Kit ($49). Enjoy!

And, the website is in Chinese, which is easier on the eyes for our Chinese engineers :-)