CHENNAI, INDIA: Cypress Semiconductor Corp. and Anna University Chennai, India today announced an agreement to set up a joint PSoC programmable system-on-chip (SoC) laboratory in the Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering, College of Engineering Guindy Campus.

The PSoC lab will be a platform for providing technical training, development of intellectual property and embedded systems in the vibrant and growing embedded system design community at Anna University Chennai.

As part of the agreement, Cypress will provide hands-on training to the faculty and students of Anna University Chennai, in addition to free hardware kits and software tools valued at over $200,000 USD.  Anna University Chennai will provide the facilities for the laboratory.

The agreement was signed at Anna University on November 6 by Babak Hedayati, Cypress’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing and Corporate Business Development, and Mannar Jawahar, Vice- Chancellor of Anna University Chennai.

“We are delighted to partner with Anna University Chennai and pleased to introduce a new generation of designers to the PSoC architecture,” said Hedayati. “PSoC is everywhere, in mobile phones, laptops, MP3 players, and even products such as toothbrushes and intelligent shoes are enabled by PSoC. We believe that this laboratory will inspire and fuel students’ imaginations to come up with new applications for PSoC in embedded systems.”

“Anna University is pleased to partner with an industry leader such as Cypress for this new laboratory,” said Mannar Jawahar. “We have developed a strong connection with Cypress, including the training of 25 faculty members, an industry project in medical electronics and the recruitment of talented graduates. This agreement strengthens our partnership; our students and faculty will derive rich benefits from designing on the flexible PSoC platform, and Cypress benefits from increased PSoC knowledge within the many talented designers in our student body.”

“Cypress is committed to develop the next generation of designers in India,” said Patrick Kane, Director of University Relation at Cypress. “This agreement is one example of our commitment to premier engineering institutions in India. We also recently launched a nationwide design contest for undergraduate and graduate-level engineering students in India (www.psocidcindia.com). Efforts such as these are important steps in developing expertise and nurturing the rich engineering talent in India.”

PSoC: Because change happens
PSoC devices employ a highly configurable system-on-chip architecture for embedded control design. PSoC devices integrate configurable analog and digital circuits, controlled by an on-chip microcontroller, providing both enhanced design revision capability and component count savings. They include up to 32 Kbytes of Flash memory, 2 Kbytes of SRAM, an 8x8 multiplier with 32-bit accumulator, power and sleep monitoring circuits, and hardware I2C communications.

The flexible PSoC resources allow designers to future-proof their products by enabling firmware-based changes during design, validation, production, and in the field. The unique PSoC flexibility shortens design cycle time and allows for late-breaking feature enhancements. All PSoC devices are also dynamically reconfigurable, enabling designers to morph internal resources on-the-fly, utilizing fewer components to perform a given task.

A single PSoC device can integrate as many as 100 peripheral functions, saving customers design time, board space and power consumption while improving system quality. Customers can save as much as $10 in system costs.

Cypress University Alliance
Cypress's University Alliance Program is a multifaceted program empowering electronics engineering and computer science students to develop the skill sets needed to perform in today's marketplace." The program mounts regional design competitions, offers academic workshops, and maintains a university alliance website (www.cypress.com/cua) which provides access to myriad free design resources, evaluation boards and online courses.