Future Technology Devices International (FTDI) has introduced a single-channel USB2.0 interface device.
It is a USB2.0 to UART/FIFO interface device which can be configured via EEPROM to support a number of different serial or parallel interfaces.
“The dual channel version of this chip, which we have been selling for some time, is often referred to as the bulldozer, it just works,” said Ian Dunn, engineering manager at FTDI.
“The single channel device contains USB, serial and parallel protocol engines, eliminating any requirement for USB specific firmware development,” said Dunn.
The device supports IO interface levels of 3.3V with 5V tolerant inputs, and so will support MCUs and FPGAs.
The device has on-chip multiple protocol support and so as well as UART interfacing, the FT232H supports other synchronous IOs such as SPI, I2C, JTAG, and FPGA programming interfaces.
It is capable of communication speeds of up to 30Mbit/s.
It can also be configured to implement proprietary synchronous serial bus protocols.
Another feature of the chip is a proprietary, synchronous, half-duplex serial/parallel interface capable of communicating with external logic at data rates of up to 30Mbyte/s.
“The bus can be used to trade off bandwidth against the number of physical data lines (one, two, four or eight) available to connect the FT232H to external logic,” said Dunn.
There are on-chip 1.8V and 3.3V low drop-out (LDO) voltage regulators and the supplier offers royalty free drivers for Windows, Linux, MAC and WinCE operating systems.