Dynamic Reconfiguration in PSoC 1 - a real Transformer

Tip / Sign in to post questions, reply, level up, and achieve exciting badges. Know more

cross mob
Anonymous
Not applicable

A famous Hollywood movie "Transformers" showed mechanical robots transforming itself into cars, fighter planes, and what not. Do you know PSoC 1 can do the same? Well..not cars and fighter planes  but at the embedded systems level . This is possible with a feature called as Dynamic Reconfiguration.

   

Dynamic reconfiguration is one of the many unique features of PSoC 1 device, which can make ONE PSoC 1 device look like MANY micrcontrollers (or calling it systems would be better).

   
    Many resources in a system are, sometimes, not always required to be functioning continuously. It may be triggered by a particular event. Till that time, that particular resource sits idle doing nothing. Dynamic reconfiguration helps to reuse that resource to implement some other function. (Note that the resources are not only the functional blocks like analog and digital blocks in PSoC 1 but routing is also a kind of resource.)   
   
        
   
    For example, for a typical Point Of Sale (POS) device, you can implement magnetic card reader, thermal printer and battery charger using a single PSoC 1 device.   
   
        
   
    ->Magnetic card reader requires amplifiers, comparators, ADC and a timer.   
   
    ->Thermal printer requires a timer, PWM, SPIM and ADC.   
   
    ->Battery charger requires a PWM, Timer, amplifier, comparator and ADC.    
   
        
   
    In this particular application, you will notice that -   
   
    1. Thermal printer function is not required when no card swipe has happened or during card swipe   
   
    2. Magnetic card reader functionality can be disabled during printing of paper   
   
    3. Battery charger function can wait during card swipe or during paper printing           
   
        
   
    As one function is required at a time, PSoC 1 device can reuse its hardware to integrate all three functions, with the help of dynamic reconfiguration.   
   
        
   
    You can read more on dynamic reconfiguration of PSoC 1 device in application note AN2104 which can be accessed by below link-   
       
        
   
    -Rajiv Badiger   
0 Likes
0 Replies