Cypress Semiconductor Corp. today announced the US Patent Office has issued Cypress its one hundredth patent related to its TrueTouch capacitive touchscreen controllers. The patent, numbered 8,610,443, relates to attenuator circuits that contribute to the TrueTouch Gen5 family’s unmatched immunity to electrical noise from chargers and displays, which can render touchscreens for smartphones, superphones, tablets, e-readers and other portable devices unusable. Cypress is continuing to expand its intellectual property (IP) portfolio at the industry’s highest rate with more than 200 patents pending, protecting the competitive advantage of its TrueTouch offerings and their differentiating features.
In addition to patents related to noise immunity, Cypress’s patented DualSense technology allows TrueTouch solutions to execute both self-capacitance and mutual-capacitance measurements in the same device. This enables the Gen5 family to offer the industry’s best waterproofing for seamless performance in real-world conditions, including the presence of rain, condensation or sweat. Cypress also holds patents related to panel construction, mutual capacitance sensing, scanning methods, setting baselines, and tracking and identification of fingers, styluses and other objects.
Cypress is demonstrating its TrueTouch portfolio in customer meetings at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada from January 7-10, 2014.
“Earning our one hundredth capacitive touch related patent demonstrates both the strength of our touchscreen IP portfolio and the true technological innovation behind the unique features and leading performance of our TrueTouch solutions,” said John Carey, Senior Director of TrueTouch Marketing at Cypress. “With more than 200 more patents currently pending, Cypress is committed to continuing development of differentiating features that enable our customers to create the market’s next-generation products.”
The TrueTouch Gen5 family’s ChargerArmor feature delivers unprecedented 40 volt peak-to-peak (Vpp) charger noise immunity measured from 1 to 500 kHz with an ultra-thin 0.5-mm cover lens and a finger-size up to 22 mm—the most stringent specifications used to measure any touchscreen controller. No competing controllers deliver noise immunity over 10 Vpp under these conditions. And with a more common finger size of 9 mm, Gen5 controllers deliver 60 Vpp. Another patented element of TrueTouch’s noise resistance is its unique ability to deliver on-chip 10V Tx and Tx-Boost, a multi-phase Tx solution to increase signal strength as needed, providing an unmatched signal-to-noise ratio.
Gen5 controllers drive the touchscreen at 10V and at high frequency with narrow-band, single-pass scanning and advanced hardware DSP filtering. By combining this powerful architecture with an industry leading 32-bit ARM Cortex M-Core processor that is known for high-efficiency MIPS/mW, the family boasts 120-Hz refresh rates, and averages low power consumption of 12 mW in active mode and 15 uW in deep-sleep mode. The family’s unmatched noise immunity enables designers of next-generation handsets to implement ultra-thin, display-integrated stackups, including In-Cell, On-Cell, and direct lamination onto a noisy display. The result will be thinner, sleeker end-products with a flawless user experience.