Cypress on Indian semicon industry trends; launches PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 architectures

Cypress Semiconductor claims to have revolutionized the embedded design space with its high performance, low power PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 programmable system-on-chip architectures.

Rajeev Mehtani, Senior Vice President, Cypress Semiconductor, India Operations.

Thanks to some great work done by my associate Usha Prasad, and Cypress’ Meghna Bhutoria, I was able to find out more about this launch in an in-depth conversation with Rajeev Mehtani, Senior Vice President, Cypress Semiconductor, India Operations. I also discussed with him, the India advantage for Cypress, as well as his views regarding the Indian semiconductor industry today.

PSoC and its benefits

Cypress’s PSoC is the world’s only programmable embedded SoC integrating configurable analog and digital peripheral functions, memory and a microcontroller on a single chip. It is a revolutionary design methodology.

A number of analog and digital components are available. Then there’s an MCU. Typically, if you take an MCU, everything is fixed. In the PsoC, everything is programmable. ASIC is the end game in full programmability. For PSoC, you can immediately go on with designing the product. You can even make changes as you design. You are not paying for ASIC pricing!

The three main values a PSoC provides customers are:

Integration: The ability to integrate discrete components and reduce BoM costs, reduce manufacturing costs (PCB layout costs), and reduce power consumption with fewer devices.

Programmable Analog: The ability to integrate analog discrete components like amps, filters, ADCs, etc as well as to integrate signal conditioning.

Flexibility: The traditional benefit of programmability—ability to continuously be able to respond to change, real-time and parallel prototype/design/production of products to get to market faster.

PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 architectures

Cypress is introducing new, scalable architectures to extend the PSoC design methodology to the precision analog, programmable digital and high performance 8- to 32-bit world. The PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 architectures consist of numerous product families per architecture with hundreds of devices under each family.

Cypress PSoC

The PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 architectures are powered by high performance, industry-standard processors:

* PSoC 3 architecture is based on a new, high-performance 8-bit 8051 processor with up to 33 MIPS.

* PSoC 5 architecture includes a powerful 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 processor with up to 100 DMIPS.

Features of the new PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 architectures include: programmable precision analog sub-system, programmable high-performance digital sub-system, high-performance CPU sub-systems, industry leading low power, and programmable and feature-rich I/O and clocking.

PSoC to change way embedded designers solve problems

PSoC removes the barriers designers face with fixed function MCUs. Programmable analog and digital blocks in PSoC give designers the flexibility to adapt to changing requirements quickly and easily, while designing products that specifically meet market demands.

Flexibility

We work in an environment where change is the only constant. PSoC gives designers the flexibility to:

• Add new features to the application.

• Differentiate their products.

• Makes it easy to tune and adjust their designs during debug/system bring-up.

With ASICs and traditional SoC offerings, semiconductor companies around the world offer an assortment of choices — but in the end designers still end up compromising on the system features or on the price they are willing to spend. However, with PSoC, they can optimize, rather than force these compromises and in the end get more functionality, in some cases greater than 100 percent efficiencies, at lower system costs and better power savings, to and get exactly what they need.

Let’s take an example using a typical lifecycle development model. The product marketing group identifies and defines the next big consumer electronic product that’s going to revolutionize the world. Only problem, they’re not exactly sure they fully understand what the requirements are yet but know they need to get moving in order to get the product to market quickly. So, they hand over a set of requirements to the designers who in turn identify what functional components they are going to need to deliver; rough layout, there is some early research and they are usually successfully past the architecture definition milestone in the design lifecycle.

However, as the final architecture design is reviewed and further progress is made through the other phases to get the product into production, marketing continues to clarify the requirements and the developers are expected to quickly adapt those in the design. And this adapting means complete redesigns at every stage of the process. With PSoC, designers have the means to adapt by using the programmable fabric within their device to swap out components, add or remove components and keep the design cycle moving in the right direction—all the way through to production.

NXP India's Rajeev Mehtani on top trends in global/Indian electronics and semicon!

When a new year approaches, we start analyzing the year gone by and try to gauge what could happen in the coming year. This really holds true, as far as the technology industry is concerned.

It’s been a week since I’ve been mulling over these myself, especially, pondering over developments in the global semiconductor and electronics industries, as well as what could happen in India during 2009. Well, lots will happen, and I can’t wait for the new year to start!

I caught up with Rajeev Mehtani, vice president and managing director, NXP Semiconductors, India, and discussed in depth about the trends for 2009. Here’s a look at that discussion.

INDIA — ELECTRONICS & SEMICONDUCTORS

1. The DTH story will continue to increase in India with companies such as Tata Sky, DISH TV, BIG TV, etc., gaining market share. Owing to these challenges, there would be significant consolidation among the cable operators. Digitalization will also be seen in 2009.

2. The slowdown will affect growth across all sectors. Our view is that LCD TVs as well as STBs will continue to grow.

3. The year 2009 will witness e-commerce revolution and the RFID sector will grow at a 40-50 percent clip. The government has been sponsoring a lot of projects, which include RFID in the metros, e-passport cards and national ID cards. By mid-2009, we can expect a mass deployment of these projects as well as micro payments.

4. Manufacturing in India will continue to grow; EMS or OEMs, such as Samsung, Nokia, Flextronics, etc.

5. There could be a move from services to products in electronics and semiconductor spaces. The number of funded startups has grown significantly over the last years and more and more ideas are coming on the table.

6. The solar/PV sector will grow in India. High entry cost of capital for panels will be a barrier for this sector. Government enhancement is necessary. India will be different than other countries as people won’t push energy back into the grid; it will be used more for household consumption. The India grid is unstable. Tracking it requires a lot of expensive electronic switching. Solar deployment could be at the micro level, and also community level, where it makes more sense.

7. The startups in India are mostly Web 2.0 based, although there aren’t many hardware startups.

GLOBAL — ELECTRONICS & SEMICONDUCTORS

1. The semiconductor industry is truly global, That is mostly because it is a very expensive industry.

2. Things are a bit murky in the semiconductor industry. It would probably be dipping 10-15 percent next year.

3. Globally, energy management and home automation will start to take off in 2009. Satellite broadcasters will also continue to gain more strength.

4. On a worldwide scale, 3G will win. You will have 3G phones, and you’d add LTE to those. India is slightly different. Only 20 percent of Indian households are ready for broadband access. In India, WiMAX could be a way to have wireless broadband at home.

5. Industries moving to 300mm fabs will be making up only 20-25pc of the market. Not many need 45nm or 40nm chips. People will question any major capex, until there’s a big return and wait for recession to end. The bright spot is solar!

6. The fabless strategy would be the only way to go forward. While MNCs with fabless strategy are present in India, Indian startups in this space are quite few.