UART ==>
Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter
<communications, hardware> (UART) An integrated circuit used for serial
communications, containing a transmitter (parallel-to-serial converter) and a
receiver (serial-to-parallel converter), each clocked separately.
The parallel side of a UART is usually connected to the bus of a computer. When
the computer writes a byte to the UART's transmit data register (TDR), the UART
will start to transmit it on the serial line. The UART's status register
contains a flag bit which the computer can read to see if the UART is ready to
transmit another byte. Another status register bit says whether the UART has
received a byte from the serial line, in which case the computer should read it
from the receive data register (RDR). If another byte is received before the
previous one is read, the UART will signal an "overrun" error via another status
bit.
The UART may be set up to interrupt the computer when data is received or when
ready to transmit more data.
The UART's serial connections usually go via separate line driver and line
receiver integrated circuits which provide the power and voltages required to
drive the serial line and give some protection against noise on the line.
Data on the serial line is formatted by the UART according to the setting of the
UART's control register. This may also determine the transmit and receive baud
rates if the UART contains its own clock circuits or "baud rate generators". If
incorrectly formated data is received the UART may signal a "framing error" or
"parity error".
Often the clock will run at 16 times the baud rate (bits per second) to allow
the receiver to do centre sampling - i.e. to read each bit in the middle of its
allotted time period. This makes the UART more tolerant to variations in the
clock rate ("jitter") of the incoming data.
An example of a late 1980s UART was the Intel 8450. In the 1990s, newer UARTs
were developed with on-chip buffers. This allowed higher transmission speed
without data loss and without requiring such frequent attention from the
computer. For example, the Intel 16550 has a 16 byte FIFO. Variants include the
16C550, 16C650, 16C750, and 16C850.
The term "Serial Communications Interface" (SCI) was first used at Motorola
around 1975 to refer to their start-stop asyncronous serial interface device,
which others were calling a UART.
See also bit bang.
[Is this the same as an ACIA?]
(2003-07-13)
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