Document No.: FT_000060
FT4232H QUAD HIGH SPEED USB TO MULTIPURPOSE UART/MPSSE IC
Datasheet Version 2.09
Clearance No.: FTDI#78
4 Function Description
The FT4232H is FTDI’s 5th generation of USB devices. The FT4232H is a USB 2.0 High Speed (480Mb/s)
to UART/MPSSE ICs. It has the capability of being configured in a variety of industry standard serial
interfaces.
The FT4232H has four independent configurable interfaces. Two of these interfaces can be configured as
UART, JTAG, SPI, I2C or bit-bang mode, using an MPSSE, with independent baud rate generators. The
remaining two interfaces can be configured as UART or bit-bang.
4.1 Key Features
USB High Speed to Quad Interface. The FT4232H is a USB 2.0 High Speed (480Mbits/s) to quad
flexible/configurable serial interfaces.
Functional Integration. The FT4232H integrates a USB protocol engine which controls the physical
Universal Transceiver Macrocell Interface (UTMI) and handles all aspects of the USB 2.0 High Speed
interface. The FT4232H includes an integrated +1.8V Low Drop-Out (LDO) regulator and 12MHz to
480MHz PLL. It also includes 2kbytes Tx and Rx data buffers per channel. The FT4232H effectively
integrates the entire USB protocol on a chip.
MPSSE.Multi-Purpose Synchronous Serial Engines (MPSSE), capable of speeds up to 30 Mbits/s, provides
flexible synchronous interface configurations.
Data Transfer rate. The FT4232H supports a data transfer rate up to 12 Mbit/s when configured as an
RS232/RS422/RS485 UART interface. Please note the FT4232H does not support the baud rates of 7
Mbaud 9 Mbaud, 10 Mbaud and 11 Mbaud.
Latency Timer. This is really a feature of the driver and is used to as a timeout to flush short packets of
data back to the PC. The default is 16ms, but it can be altered between 0ms and 256ms. At 0ms latency
you get a packet transfer on every high speed microframe.
4.2 Functional Block Descriptions
Quad Multi-Purpose UART/MPSSE Controllers. The FT4232H has four independent UART/MPSSE
Controllers. These blocks control the UART data or control the Bit-Bang mode if selected by the SETUP
command. The blocks used on channel A and channel B also contain a MPSSE (Multi Protocol
Synchronous Serial Engine) in each of them which can be used independently of each other and the
remaining UART channels. Using this it can be configured under software command to have 1 MPSSE + 3
UARTS (each UART can be set to Bit Bang mode to gain extra I/O if required) or 2 MPSSE + 2 UARTS.
USB Protocol Engine and FIFO control. The USB Protocol Engine controls and manages the interface
between the UTMI PHY and the FIFOs of the chip. It also handles power management and the USB
protocol specification.
Dual Port FIFO TX Buffer (2Kbytes per channel). Data from the Host PC is stored in these buffers to
be used by the Multi-purpose UART/FIFO controllers. This is controlled by the USB Protocol Engine and
FIFO control block.
Dual Port FIFO RX Buffer (2Kbytes per channel). Data from the Multi-purpose UART/FIFO controllers
is stored in these blocks to be sent back to the Host PC when requested. This is controlled by the USB
Protocol Engine and FIFO control block.
RESET Generator - The integrated Reset Generator Cell provides a reliable power-on reset to the device
internal circuitry at power up. The RESET# input pin allows an external device to reset the FT4232H.
RESET# should be tied to VCCIO (+3.3v) if not being used.
Independent Baud Rate Generators - The Baud Rate Generators provides a x16 or a x10 clock input
to the UART’s from a 120MHz reference clock and consists of a 14 bit pre-scaler and 4 register bits which
provide fine tuning of the baud rate (used to divide by a number plus a fraction). This determines the
Baud Rate of the UART which is programmable from 183 baud to 12 million baud. The FT2232H does not
support the baud rates of 7 Mbaud 9 Mbaud, 10 Mbaud and 11 Mbaud.
See FTDI application note AN232B-05 on the FTDI website (www.ftdichip.com) for more details.
Copyright © 2010 Future Technology Devices International Limited
15
FTDI [ FUTURE TECHNOLOGY DEVICES INTERNATIONAL LTD. ]
