Quad UART and 3.3V PCI interface gives fast data throughput

Handling serial data rates up to 15Mbps in asynchronous mode and 60 Mbps in synchronous mode, the OXmPCI954 integrates four high-performance UART channels, a 3.3V PCI interface and a local bus / IEEE1284 port in a 160 LQFP package.

A single chip solution for 3.3V PCI and Mini PCI based serial and parallel add-in cards, the OXmPCI954 is a flexible multi-function device. Function 0 offers the ultra-fast quad UART capability. Function 1 provides either an 8-bit local bus or a bi-directional IEEE1284 parallel port supporting SPP, EPP and ECP protocols.

To simplify design-in, each high-speed UART channel is software compatible with industry standard 16C550 devices and Oxford's own OX16C950 UART family. Expansion cards with more than four channels are also possible using the IC's 8-bit pass-through local bus option, which allows chips to be daisy-chained to create up to 20 serial ports.

Equipped with 128-byte deep transmitter and receiver FIFOs, the OXmPCI954 is able to significantly reduce CPU overhead and boost add-in card performance. The PCI interface is fully compliant with PCI bus version 3 and PCI power management version 1.1 specifications.

To enhance device driver efficiency and reduce interrupt latency, the UARTS have multi-port features including shadowed FIFO levels, a global interrupt source register and a Good-Data status indicator, easily readable in four adjacent DWORD registers visible to logical functions in I/O and memory space.

Oxford Semiconductor is supporting the OXmPCI954 with software drivers for Windows (98 and above), with Linux drivers available from third party sources. A PCI card reference design, application notes for set-up and utilities for configuration upgrade are also available.

Price competitive with alternative 4-channel and many 2-channel devices, Oxford Semiconductor's quad UART PCI interface chip is $11.68 in 1000 piece quantities.