Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NASDAQ:CY) today introduced its new Gen4
family of TrueTouch® touchscreen controllers. Gen4 delivers
industry-best performance in all categories, including the world's best
Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and unparalleled performance in the presence
of all noise sources—the biggest challenge faced by touchscreen designs.
Breakthrough Noise Elimination
The Gen4 family was designed from the ground up to deliver the world's
highest SNR in real world applications. It is the first and only
touchscreen IC that delivers built-in 10V Tx to drive the touch panel at
10V. Because SNR is directly proportional to the voltage at which the
panel is driven, this feature allows Cypress to offer nearly four times
the SNR of the next closest competitor.
The Gen4 family further raises the SNR bar as the first touchscreen
device family to completely eliminate display noise in hardware. Gen4's
patent-pending Display Armor™ offers unprecedented immunity
to noise from every type of display, even low cost noisy displays such
as ACVCOM LCDs. This allows touchscreen designers to make their products
thinner by removing the air gap between the display and the sensor, and
also less expensive by removing the shield layer in the sensor. Display
Armor allows Gen4 to operate seamlessly with direct lamination, on-cell
and in-cell stackups, regardless of the display chemistry.
"Customers have told us again and again that delivering flawless
performance in the presence of noise is the biggest design hurdle they
face," said Dhwani Vyas, vice president of Cypress's User Interface
Business Unit. "Our Gen4 family with 10V Tx offers a quantum leap in
performance in noise, including display noise that is often the most
difficult to overcome. We are confident that competitive offerings will
have a hard time meeting this performance."
"We forecast that the touchscreen module market will grow over 200% in
the next several years, reaching $23 billion in 2017," said Dr. Jennifer
Colegrove, Vice President, Emerging Display Technologies at
DisplaySearch. "From our market research, it's apparent that projected
capacitive touchscreen performance in the presence of electric noise is
an important consideration. The controller ICs that could support add-on
touch sensors as well as both on-cell and in-cell technologies with LCD
displays will be very attractive."
World's Fastest and Lowest Power Touchscreen Controller
In addition to unmatched noise performance, the Gen4 product family
offers the industry's fastest refresh rate of 400Hz, and has the unique
ability to scan a capacitive touch panel at 1,000 Hz – both
industry-best metrics.