Building analog circuits with PsoC ICs

PsoC

Hi,

Did anybody use the PsoC IC's , they have mixed signal blocks which can build a complete circiut by programming it without the heavy work of building the components from discrete components , I wonder if I can build my project (analogue and digital) on only this IC by only programming without buying components and the hardwork of debugging will be by software only , Is it simple to use it?

Does somebody build analogue circiuts with a similar technology?

Re: PsoC

Hello.

It is simple to use. The IDE is very good but don't expect miracles. There are also some annoying glitches.

Before doing anything I'd suggest that you try to synthesize a design for your application. Depending on the configuration and parameters of the design blocks, you may run out of blocks.

Other technology is FPAAs, check www.anadigm.com.

tk'care.

Re: PsoC

Thank you for your notes, What do you know about fpaa, Are they better than PsoC? Are they simple in designing and programming? Are they really substitute the real circiuts?

Re: PsoC

The question you asked is typical for people from the digital generation. The elaborate use of FPGA and it's vast spectrum of applications were a big breakthrough in digital design. Now, people start to dream the same could happen with analog designs. Just put a lot of standard building blocks on the die and let the user connect them at will. But is it that simple?

The aswer is clearly no. Let's start with the building blocks by themselves. To make sure they perform well under many circumstances (any possible connection!), the designers have to make very conservative designs. They cannot tune and tweak an amplifier to maximum gain of minimum noise. Because some extra inductance on the input from long connections could get the thing oscillating!

Secondly, the bandwidth of these building blocks is quite low. So PSoc or FPAA will never be used for upper-frequency designs. Compare it to the speed of current state of the art fpga's. They use CMOS technology (low cost) at the expense of lower speed. However, bipolar logic (eg ECL) is much faster (but higher power dissipation!), and is used in ASIC's for high-end applications.

The biggest advantage however is the price, and the time-to market ( faster designs). It depends on your situation what you should prefer.

So you have to make a distinction to high-end and low-end applications. If you can live with the limited performance of PSoc and FPAA's, hell why not use them, after all they are cheap! But for high-end applications, I fear the easy click and make software approach of these tools just isn't good enough. Designing is an art that is learned by experiencece!