Anna U Chennai Partners with Cypress on Embedded Systems Engineering

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 11/13/08

India's Anna University Chennai and San Jose-based firm Cypress Semiconductor will be setting up a joint programmable system-on-chip (PSoC) laboratory in Anna's Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering, College of Engineering Guindy Campus. The PSoC lab will be a platform for providing technical training, development of intellectual property, and embedded systems as part of the university's embedded system design community.

PSoC technology focuses on creating chips that allow for changes during design, validation, production, and in the field.

As part of the agreement, Cypress will provide training to the faculty and students as well as free hardware kits and software tools valued at about $200,000. The university will provide the facilities for the laboratory.

"Anna University is pleased to partner with an industry leader such as Cypress for this new laboratory," said Mannar Jawahar, vice chancellor. "We have developed a strong connection with Cypress, including the training of 25 faculty members, an industry project in medical electronics, and the recruitment of talented graduates. The agreement strengthens our partnership; our students and faculty derive rich benefits from designing on the flexible PSoC platform, and Cypress benefits from increased PSoC knowledge within the many talented designers in our student body."

"PSoC is everywhere--in mobile phones, laptops, MP3 players, and even products such as toothbrushes and intelligent shoes are enabled by PSoC," said Babak Hedayati, Cypress' senior VP of worldwide marketing and corporate business development. "We believe that this laboratory will inspire and fuel students' imaginations to come up with new applications for PSoC in embedded systems."