Controller set to support multiple touches in consumer products

Chris Ard, director of marketing for Atmel's touch technology division, said maxTouch represents a 'big change' in the way the company approached the technology. "Users are looking for something that doesn't impact their application," he claimed, "and which does what they want. maXTouch is fast, linear, repeatable and multitouch, giving good brightness from mainstream materials." He added that maXTouch is a hardware solution, unlike the company's software based QTouch offering. The first part in the maXTouch range is the mXT224, which offers 224 nodes, or XY points, supporting such features as zoom, rotate, handwriting and shape recognition functionality on screens of up to 10in diagonal. The device can report the positions of unlimited, simultaneous touches and can redraw the screen every 4ms. Atmel adds the number of nodes and the part's performance makes it Ard points to low power consumption as a further benefit. "It consumes less than 2mW in idle mode. Other touchscreen technologies can reduce battery life significantly." The mXT224 is also said to be the first capacitive touchscreen solution to support the use of a stylus. Ard noted: "The 80:1 signal to noise ratio allows a stylus of up to 3mm in diameter to be used, as well as a fingernail and so on." The mXT224 integrates Atmel's risc and two on chip dsp engines that process the X and Y positions on the touchscreen. Four external capacitors are required. Further devices will be introduced in the coming months, with products featuring the mXT224 scheduled to appear in Q1 2010.