Cypress Semiconductor has introduced new, fully-integrated TrueTouch touchscreen controllers, the TMA300 family, based on the PSoC (programmable system-on-chip) architecture. The new controllers offer best in class performance and unique features that are helping to accelerate the development of next-generation differentiated touchscreen-based user interfaces for applications in mobile handsets, portable media players, netbooks, notebooks, printers, digital still cameras, GPS systems and more.
The TMA300 family represents the next generation of multi-touch all-point technology that Cypress pioneered in 2008. The integrated analog sensing engine offers the industry's fastest and most accurate touchscreen user experience. This responsiveness allows tracking of multiple fingers simultaneously with precise x-y locations and without user delays or problems with erroneous "ghost" responses. The family supports traditional gestures such as tap, double-tap, pan, pinch, scroll, and rotate, and also provides developers a unique platform to create custom gestures without being constrained to two-finger touch.
Cypress offers the TMA300 family in a tiny chip-scale package (CSP) as well as in a thin 0.6mm QFN package. These package options give end customers a range of options for mounting the controllers on flex modules and/or directly on a printed circuit board with minimal area impact. The new devices also support input voltages from 1.7V to 3.6V, enabling very low power consumption for battery operated devices.
Cypress has shipped millions of TrueTouch touchscreen controllers to date. The company was the first to introduce multi-touch all-point functionality and this proven technology has been in mass production since 2008.
The TMA300 family will support a range of new features including low-cost 3mm passive stylus input, proximity detection that enables ear/face/palm rejection, water proofing and a "hover" feature that meets the touch requirements for operating systems such as Symbian, Android, Windows Mobile and Windows7. In addition, the new devices offer Cypress's legendary noise immunity with patented capacitive sensing technology that enables flawless operation in noisy RF and LCD environments.
The flexibility and best-in-class performance of the TrueTouch solution allow customers to rapidly develop leading-edge solutions without having to buy turnkey modules. They have a choice of using touch sensors (glass or film) and LCDs from preferred partners, and can develop innovative mechanical designs ranging from flat to curved surfaces of varying thickness. Based on customer feedback, these features are unique in the industry, and combined with the performance of the TMA300 family, give the Cypress solution dramatic advantages over competing offerings.
"Our new multi-touch all-point TrueTouch family has been designed-in to multiple platforms by top-tier manufacturers," said Chris Seams, executive vice president of Sales and Marketing at Cypress. "Our customers continue to choose TrueTouch for its performance, flexibility and value."
"Cypress's new multi-touch touchscreen controllers deliver the industry's fastest and most accurate tracking, and the excellent power consumption required by world-class consumer electronics devices," said Norm Taffe, executive vice president of the Consumer and Computation Division at Cypress. "These improvements add to the TrueTouch architecture's advantages of programmability and integration, as well as the flexibility to choose from a wide range of touchscreen module suppliers."
Availability
The new multi-touch all-point TrueTouch family includes the CY8CTMA300E device with 32 Kbytes of flash and the CY8CTMA301E device with 16 Kbytes of flash. Both products are offered in 36- and 48-pin QFN packages, and the CY8CTMA300E is also offered in a tiny 49-pin chip-scale package. The devices have been sampling since early 2009 with leading OEMs and have already achieved multiple design wins. Volume ramp-ups with leading OEMs have already started.
Cypress TrueTouch TMA300
Photo: Company
