Cypress PSoC
PSoC (programmable system on a chip) is a family of microcontroller integrated circuits by Cypress Semiconductor. These chips include a CPU core and mixed-signal arrays of configurable integrated analog and digital peripherals. In 2002, Cypress began shipping commercial quantities of the PSoC 1. To promote the PSoC, Cypress sponsored a "PSoC Design Challenge" in Circuit Cellar magazine in 2002 and 2004. In April 2013, Cypress released the fourth generation, PSoC 4. The PSoC 4 features a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0 CPU, with programmable analog blocks (operational amplifiers and comparators), programmable digital blocks (PLD-based UDBs), programmable routing and flexible GPIO (route any function to any pin), a serial communication block (for SPI, UART, I2C), a timer/counter/PWM block and more. PSoC is used in devices as simple as Sonicare toothbrushes and Adidas sneakers, and as complex as the TiVo set-top box. One PSoC implements capacitive sensing for the touch-sensitive scroll wheel on the Apple iPod click wheel. In 2014, Cypress extended the PSoC 4 family by integrating a Bluetooth Low Energy radio along with a PSoC 4 Cortex-M0-based SoC in a single, monolithic die. In 2016, Cypress released PSoC 4 S-Series, featuring ARM Cortex-M0+ CPU. A PSoC integrated circuit is composed of a core, configurable analog and digital blocks, and programmable routing and interconnect. The configurable blocks in a PSoC are the biggest difference from other microcontrollers. PSoC has three separate memory spaces: paged SRAM for data, Flash memory for instructions and fixed data, and I/O registers for controlling and accessing the configurable logic blocks and functions. The device is created using SONOS technology. PSoC resembles an ASIC: blocks can be assigned a wide range of functions and interconnected on-chip. Unlike an ASIC, there is no special manufacturing process required to create the custom configuration — only startup code that is created by Cypress' PSoC Designer (for PSoC 1) or PSoC Creator (for PSoC 3 / 4 / 5) IDE.
