Cypress Raises the Bar on All Measures of Touchscreen Performance With New Gen4 TrueTouch® Controller Line
September 26 2011 - 9:00AM
Business Wire
Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NASDAQ:CY) today introduced its new
Gen4 family of TrueTouch® touchscreen controllers. Gen4 delivers
industry-best performance in all categories, including the world’s
best Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and unparalleled performance in
the presence of all noise sources—the biggest challenge faced by
touchscreen designs.
Breakthrough Noise Elimination
The Gen4 family was designed from the ground up to deliver the
world’s highest SNR in real world applications. It is the first and
only touchscreen IC that delivers built-in 10V Tx to drive the
touch panel at 10V. Because SNR is directly proportional to the
voltage at which the panel is driven, this feature allows Cypress
to offer nearly four times the SNR of the next closest
competitor.
The Gen4 family further raises the SNR bar as the first
touchscreen device family to completely eliminate display noise in
hardware. Gen4’s patent-pending Display Armor™ offers unprecedented
immunity to noise from every type of display, even low cost noisy
displays such as ACVCOM LCDs. This allows touchscreen designers to
make their products thinner by removing the air gap between the
display and the sensor, and also less expensive by removing the
shield layer in the sensor. Display Armor allows Gen4 to operate
seamlessly with direct lamination, on-cell and in-cell stackups,
regardless of the display chemistry.
“Customers have told us again and again that delivering flawless
performance in the presence of noise is the biggest design hurdle
they face,” said Dhwani Vyas, vice president of Cypress’s User
Interface Business Unit. “Our Gen4 family with 10V Tx offers a
quantum leap in performance in noise, including display noise that
is often the most difficult to overcome. We are confident that
competitive offerings will have a hard time meeting this
performance.”
“We forecast that the touchscreen module market will grow over
200% in the next several years, reaching $23 billion in 2017,” said
Dr. Jennifer Colegrove, Vice President, Emerging Display
Technologies at DisplaySearch. “From our market research, it's
apparent that projected capacitive touchscreen performance in the
presence of electric noise is an important consideration. The
controller ICs that could support add-on touch sensors as well as
both on-cell and in-cell technologies with LCD displays will be
very attractive.”
World’s Fastest and Lowest Power Touchscreen
Controller
In addition to unmatched noise performance, the Gen4 product
family offers the industry’s fastest refresh rate of 400Hz, and has
the unique ability to scan a capacitive touch panel at 1,000 Hz –
both industry-best metrics. This level of performance is enabled by
the 32-bit ARM® Cortex™ core at the heart of the Gen4 products. The
Gen4 family enables unlimited touch performance, while providing
the industry’s best accuracy and linearity of 0.2 mm. Gen4 offers
these features while boasting the world’s lowest active power
consumption of 2 mW, and a deep sleep mode that only draws 1.8 uW
with wake-up via address match on the COM port.
Gen4 also offers more capacitive sensing IO than the
competition, while still fitting into the world’s smallest
touchscreen packages. With up to 40 IO for mobile phone
applications, Gen4 can support up to four standalone CapSense®
buttons while still delivering ideal sensor pitch for up to 5-inch
screens.
The Gen4 family also offers features that only TrueTouch can
deliver, including waterproofing functionality that allows products
to meet IP-67 standards; 1-mm stylus support for Asian character
sets and accurate handwriting capture; and hover sensing to provide
mouseover-like features and true fingernail or thick-glove support
in mobile devices. Cypress’s unique, patent-pending ability to
switch dynamically between self-capacitive and mutual-capacitive
sensing methods in application enables these differentiating
features. Cypress now has over 250 issued and pending patents
pertaining to touchscreens. More information, including multiple
videos, is available at touch.cypress.com.
“Our TrueTouch solution has been extremely successful based on
its advanced feature set and ability to combat the multiple sources
of noise in touch design,” said Norm Taffe, executive vice
president of Cypress’s Consumer and Computation Division. “The Gen4
family extends our leadership in these areas and adds unmatched
performance that our customers around the world have asked for.
These customers are excited to develop the next generation of
touchscreens using this technology.”
Touchscreen Leadership
Cypress’s touch sensing portfolio is the industry’s broadest and
most well adopted, encompassing both TrueTouch and CapSense®
solutions. The Gen4 family is the latest in a string of touchscreen
firsts from Cypress, the acknowledged industry leader in touch
sensing. Examples include:
- Cypress was the first to deliver
tracking of unlimited touches.
- Cypress was the first to deliver a true
single-layer sensor solution for capacitive performance at
resistive prices.
- The new Gen4 family, as well as prior
generations, is offered in the world’s smallest CSP packages for
important space savings in handsets.
- Cypress is still the only company to
offer the patent-pending self and mutual capacitance sensing on the
same chip, enabling the development of advanced features like
waterproofing, support for 1mm stylus, and hover without increased
material or spatial costs.
- Designed to work with major mobile
platforms, including Android and Windows® 8.
Availability
Samples of the new Gen4 controllers are now available to lead
customers. Cypress expects to deliver volume production to lead
customers by the end of 2011. The family will be available in a
44-pin 5x5 QFN with 31 sense I/Os, a 48-lead 6x6 QFN package with
35 sense I/Os, a 49-ball WLCSP package with 36 sense I/Os, and a
60-ball WLCSP package with 40 sense I/Os. The WLCSP (Wafer-Level
Chip-Scale Packages) devices have a footprint of only 3.8 mm x 3.8
mm, the smallest touchscreen controllers available. More
information, including multiple videos, is available at
touch.cypress.com.
About TrueTouch
Cypress’s TrueTouch technology provides the industry’s best
noise immunity, highest signal to noise ratio (SNR), fastest
refresh rates, lowest power consumption, and world’s best accuracy
and linearity. The flexible TrueTouch solution allows customers to
rapidly develop leading-edge solutions without having to buy
turnkey modules. They have a choice of using touch sensors (glass
or film) and LCDs from preferred partners, and can develop
innovative mechanical designs ranging from flat to curved surfaces
of varying thickness. In addition, TrueTouch devices offer
Cypress’s legendary noise immunity with patented capacitive sensing
technology that enables flawless operation in noisy RF and LCD
environments. Additional TrueTouch information is available at
touch.cypress.com.
About Cypress
Cypress delivers high-performance, mixed-signal, programmable
solutions that provide customers with rapid time-to-market and
exceptional system value. Cypress offerings include the flagship
PSoC® programmable system-on-chip families and derivatives such as
PowerPSoC® solutions for high-voltage and LED lighting
applications, CapSense® touch sensing and TrueTouch solutions for
touchscreens. Cypress is the world leader in USB controllers,
including the high-performance West Bridge® solution that enhances
connectivity and performance in multimedia handsets. Cypress is
also a leader in high-performance memories and programmable timing
devices. Cypress serves numerous markets including consumer, mobile
handsets, computation, data communications, automotive, industrial
and military. Cypress trades on the NASDAQ Global Select Market
under the ticker symbol CY. Visit Cypress online at
www.cypress.com.
Cypress, the Cypress logo, PSoC, PowerPSoC, CapSense, TrueTouch,
and West Bridge are registered trademarks of Cypress Semiconductor
Corp. All other trademarks are property of their owners.
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