Oxford Semiconductor has added a pair of universal PCI to UART bridge chips to its serial connectivity product family.  Offering dual and quad serial ports and a local bus / parallel port, the OXuPCI952 and OXuPCI954 support both 3.3V and 5.0V PCI bus signalling.  Compliant with the PCI local bus specification 3.0, the devices integrate the world’s fastest UART, Oxford’s own 16C950.

Software compatible with standard 16C550 types, Oxford Semiconductor’s ultra high performance UART provides peak asynchronous transfer rates up to 15Mbps, almost double that of the alternatives.  At 128 bytes, the UART’s FIFOs are the industry’s deepest.  Helping to maximise throughput and minimise CPU overhead, they ensure optimal system performance is achieved.

Highly programmable devices, the bridge chips offer tuneable FIFO trigger levels, automated Xon/Xoff in-band and hardware out-of-band flow control and a clock prescaler, enabling users to tightly control data rates and optimise data flows.

Supporting RS232, 422 and 485 full and half duplex interfaces, the OXuPCI952 and OXuPCI954 will suit a wide range of PCI based add-in card or embedded applications, including point of sale, factory automation, ATM, and building management.  For those needing further ports, the OXuPCI chips’ local bus can be hooked up to an external UART, such as the OX16C954, alternatively an IEEE1284 compliant parallel port can be enabled in place of the local bus.

Additional flexibility is provided by the bridge chips’ 11 multipurpose GPIOs, which are easily configured as interrupt or wake-up controls.  Compliant with the PCI power management specification 1.1, the chips will also appeal to power sensitive product designs.

Oxford’s PCI/UART bridge chips are provided with WHQL certified device drivers for a wide range of operating systems, including Windows Vista and Linux, and are backed by a full evaluation kit and development tools.  RoHS compliant, these high quality devices come in the 176-pin LQFP package and are industrial temperature rated.

In 10K piece quantities, the dual serial port OXuPCI952 is priced at $4.57 USD and the quad serial port OXuPCI954 at $10.98 USD.

Contact information

For further information, contact Dorian Crugnale, Oxford Semiconductor on +1 (408) 942 4100 or contact@oxsemi.com.