Date: 07/01/2012

Cypress releases Component Pack for power monitoring and fan control in its PSoC IDE

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. has released an extension to its PSoC Creator Integrated Design Environment (IDE) for the PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 programmable system-on-chip families. Known as a “Component Pack,” the update includes new functions for Power Monitoring and Fan Control.

Cypress says its customers can easily “drag and drop” these functions into existing Pasco devices to realize new capabilities within their designs. Fully tested and characterized components are “virtual” chips represented by an icon in Cypress’s Pasco Creator software that are dragged and dropped into a design, explains Cypress.

Component Pack 3 adds a new Power Monitor component that simplifies voltage and current measurements on power rails. Up to 32 DC power rails can be monitored using a PSoC 3 device at 0.5% accuracy. The Power Monitor component simplifies the complex configuration of the ADC, clock frequencies, resolutions and ranges by abstracting the underlying analog front end and firmware code into a simple graphical user interface (GUI). System designers enter voltage and current ranges into this GUI, click the “build” button and can start measuring power rails within minutes on the PSoC Power Management Expansion Board Kit (CY8CKIT-035).

The new Fan Controller component provides the capability to independently control up to 16 industry standard 3-wire and 4-wire brushless DC fans through a simple GUI tool. The Fan Controller component generates Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) outputs for fan speed control and accepts variable-frequency tachometer inputs from the fans to enable measurement of fan rotational speeds. This component also comes with advanced fan control algorithms that reduce fan noise and regulate fan speeds even as airflow and fan loads vary which can be prototyped and developed using the PSoC Thermal Management Expansion Board Kit (CY8CKIT-036).

These new components serves telecommunications, server and storage market applications.

“With the easy-to-use graphical interface in PSoC Creator, customers can quickly customize a power monitoring and thermal management design that meets their unique system requirements all in one integrated device,” said Jim Davis, Sr. Product Marketing Manager for Cypress.

Availability: A free download of Component Pack 3 for existing PSoC Creator 2.0 users is available now at www.cypress.com/go/psoccreator.