Product category: Programmable Logic Devices
News Release from: Cypress Semiconductor | Subject: Cypress MicroSystems PsoC
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 19 July 2004
Programmable SoCs aid
commercial space flight
Cypress MicroSystems PsoC devices are embedded into the Dynon Avionics' EFIS-D10 electronic flight information system that was used aboard the first private manned space flight
Serving as a backup flight information system on SpaceShipOne, launched on 21st June 2004 over the Mojave Desert in California, the EFIS-D10 integrates ten aviation instruments in one solid-state package to control critical functions such as airspeed, altitude, pitch, roll and yaw. Nick Bogner, Lead Project Engineer at Dynon Avionics was impressed with PSoC's features from the start of the development cycle.
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 19 July 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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"It became clear that PSoC would not only help us achieve the price-integration goals we were seeking, but the analogue and digital components would allow us to provide maximum functionality with all of the features needed in this critical flight control system", Bogner said.
Dynon Avionics used four highly integrated PSoC devices in its EFIS-D10 design, greatly reducing component count and overall system cost.
PSoC's high-quality programmable analogue functions extend the application reach of the EFIS-D10 to include control monitor of magnetic field sensors, electrical gyros, accelerometers, pressure transducers and thermometers.
"Cypress MicroSystems is pleased to be a key supplier to the EFIS-D10 system that was aboard the first private manned space flight", said George Saul, President and and CEO of Cypress MicroSystems.
"Dynon Avionics pledges to provide its customers with innovative high-tech products at reasonable prices, which is why they selected PSoC".
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"PSoC's mixed signal integration reduced the overall system bill of materials and improved system quality and reliability that are so critical to one of the most important instruments that pilots use".
"PSoC also shortened the development time of the EFIS-D10 and provides a reprogrammable platform on which Dynon can make easy changes for its next design".
A true system-on-a-chip, PSoC devices are configurable mixed signal arrays that integrate the microcontroller and related peripheral circuits typically found in an embedded design.
Employing easy to use development tools, designers select configurable, precharacterised library elements to provide analogue functions such as amplifiers, ADCs, DACs, filters and comparators and digital functions such as timers, counters, PWMs, SPI and UARTs.
PSoC analogue performance is instrumentation-quality - including rail-to-rail inputs, programmable gain, 14bit ADCs and exceptionally low noise and input leakage and voltage offset.
In addition to these configurable analogue and digital blocks, PSoC devices include a fast 8bit microcontroller, up to 32Kbyte of Flash memory, 2Kbyte of SRAM, an 8 x 8 multiplier with 32bit accumulator, power and sleep monitoring circuits, a precision real time clock and hardware I2C communications.
All PSoC devices are dynamically reconfigurable, enabling designers to create new system functions on the fly.
Reconfiguring the same silicon for different functions on different subsequent clock cycles, designers can achieve more than 120% percent utilisation of the die in many cases.
In the automotive PSoC LIN bus reference design, the same transistors are reconfigured four times to support the different LIN communication modes; in doing so, these blocks consume less than 10% of PSoC hardware resources and less than 10% of the PSoC MCU cycles.
The software development environment, PSoC Designer 4.1 is a full-featured, GUI-based design tool suite that enables the user to configure their design in silicon with simple point and click options; code the MCU in either C or assembly language; and debug the design using sophisticated features such as event triggers and multiple break points while single-stepping through the code in C or assembly or a mix of the two.
The CY3205-DK Professional Class Development Kit includes a full-speed in-circuit emulator with a large trace buffer, which seamlessly integrates with PSoC Designer 4.1.
The development kit includes everything necessary to complete a design with the PSoC family of ICs.
The kits also contain all materials for the first four "tele-training" classes offered on line by Cypress.
The tools are designed to keep the cost of development to a minimum while providing all the features found in tools that cost $2000 or more.
The CY3205-DK is priced at $398.
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