Date: 03/07/2012

Cypress’s PSoC solution for fan control via PSoC Creator 2.0

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. has announced a fan control solution based on its PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 programmable system-on-chip families. The new solution is available free through PSoC Creator 2.0, Cypress’s Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 devices. The new fan control solution enables reliable, hardware-based fan control for the telecommunications, server and storage markets. The combination of the PSoC programmable digital fabric and graphical configuration tools enables customers to rapidly customize a complete fan control solution with just a few lines of firmware code.

The fan control solution is implemented within the PSoC Creator 2.0 IDE, which offers a fan controller component with a graphical user interface that abstracts the design complexities. Customers simply enter the electromechanical parameters found in the fan datasheets into the graphical interface and the toolset takes care of the details. The solution offers a hardware-based fan control and speed-regulation capability built on top of the programmable digital architecture within the PSoC devices.

PSoC’s hardware based approach avoids the issue of designing complexity of combining the firmware fan control algorithms with the I2c communication firmware. These complications are further intensified in fan tray designs where 4-12 fans are common and independent control of each fan is desired.

The new fan control solution is available as a drop-in “component” from Cypress’s PSoC Creator 2.0 design software. Components are “virtual chips” represented by an icon in Cypress’s PSoC Creator software. They are “dragged and dropped” as component icons into PSoC Creator designs and integrate system interfaces and discrete ICs into PSoC designs. Cypress provides the PSoC Thermal Management Expansion Board Kit (CY8CKIT-036) to minimize the time-to-market, specifically designed for fast development and prototyping of PSoC-based fan control systems.

“Fan control is an area where PSoC shines brightly over other solutions,” said Jim Davis, Sr. marketing manager for Cypress’s PSoC Platform. “The graphical user interface gives PSoC customers a flexible solution that is easy to implement.”

The fan control component can be downloaded at www.cypress.com/go/psoccreator