Exar Adds High Performance (15Mbps), Low Voltage & Power (1.62V) Octal UART Device Family

Exar Adds High Performance (15Mbps), Low Voltage & Power (1.62V) Octal UART Device Family

Patented Features Simplify Hardware Design and Software Development

Fremont, California, July 14, 2008 – Exar Corporation (Nasdaq: EXAR) released two highly integrated, superior performing low voltage/power eight-channel UARTs — the XR16M598 (16-Byte FIFO) and XR16M698 (32-Byte FIFO). The XR16M598/M698 series, integrated with an array of advanced features, is ideal for a wide variety of products such as next generation portable consumer devices, Point-of-Sale (POS), servers, industrial automation, ticketing machines, and public parking systems.

“This high performance (15Mbps), low voltage (1.62V) octal UART series has a wide variety of features including a patented global interrupt status register, fractional baud rate generator, and automatic hardware or software flow control,” said Eric Nguyen, strategic marketing director, Interface Product Line. “These, plus other innovative product elements such as programmable TX/RX trigger levels, automatic RS-485 half-duplex direction control, and Infrared mode (IrDA 1.0) enable system architects to optimize their designs and accelerate their time to market. In addition, there is an easy migration path as the series is software and pin compatible with the 3.3V XR16V598/V698/V798 and 5V XR16L788.”

Series Details

The XR16M598/698 has a patented approach for global interrupt status registers that uses four registers. The first register identifies the interrupting UART channels. The three remaining registers use Exar’s patented 3-bit status encoding which specifies the highest priority interrupt for each channel, thus enabling the software to quickly identify and service any pending interrupts. Additionally, system architects can take advantage of the fifth generation (5G) flat register set that simplifies software initialization during the initial design phase.

Traditional UARTs require one chip select and one interrupt line per channel. The XR16M598/M698 series requires only one chip select and one interrupt line per device thus greatly simplifying the hardware design. In addition, the integrated fractional baud rate generator (FBRG) gives the hardware designer the flexibility to use a clock source that may already be utilized by other board components to generate the desired baud rates. This FBRG eliminates the need for an extra crystal or external clock source.

Interface Products

Exar has one of the broadest portfolios of high-performance interface solutions including UARTs, serial transceivers — RS-232, RS-485 and multi-protocol, as well as, integrated UART/transceiver combinations and recently introduced wireless chipset. For chip-to-chip or system-to-system connections, Exar’s single and multi-channel interface ICs provides immediate competitive advantages to designers: low voltage/power, reduction in board space requirements, increased bandwidth capacity, and enhanced product features. Interface devices are found practically everywhere including point-of-sale (POS) terminals, digital televisions, industrial automation equipment, handheld devices, and networking environments.

Tools and Support

All devices in the series are supported by standard serial port software drivers for popular operating systems including Windows CE 4.2 and 5.0, Windows 2000, XP and Linux. With the availability of software drivers and Exar’s application support hot line (uarttechsupport@exar.com), UART customers can greatly accelerate their product development cycle.

Packages, Prices, Availability and Additional Information

Samples of the XR16M598 and XR16M698 are available now. Both devices are in a 100-pin QFP package and operate over the industrial temperature range. In 1k quantities both the XR16M598, and the XR16M698 are in the mid-$13 range. Additional information on these products can be found at http://www.exar.com/Common/Content/ProductDetails.aspx?ID=XR16M598, and http://www.exar.com/Common/Content/ProductDetails.aspx?ID=XR16M698. Additional information on other UART products can be found at http://www.exar.com/Common/Content/Product.aspx?Parent=1&ID=118.