NOTES ON SERIAL PORT OPERATION
FIFO MODE OPERATION:
This one character Tx interrupt delay will
remain active until at least two bytes have
been loaded into the FIFO, concurrently.
When the Tx FIFO empties after this
condition, the Tx interrupt will be activated
without a one character delay.
GENERAL
The RCVR FIFO will hold up to 16 bytes
regardless of which trigger level is selected.
Rx support functions and operation are quite
different from those described for the
transmitter. The Rx FIFO receives data until the
number of bytes in the FIFO equals the selected
TX AND RX FIFO OPERATION
The Tx portion of the UART transmits data
through TXD as soon as the CPU loads a byte
interrupt trigger level.
At that time if Rx
into the Tx FIFO.
loads to the Tx FIFO if it currently holds 16
Loading to the Tx FIFO will again
be enabled as soon as the next character is
transferred to the Tx shift register. These
capabilities account for the largely autonomous
operation of the Tx.
The UART will prevent
interrupts are enabled, the UART will issue an
interrupt to the CPU. The Rx FIFO will continue
to store bytes until it holds 16 of them. It will
not accept any more data when it is full. Any
more data entering the Rx shift register will set
the Overrun Error flag. Normally, the FIFO
depth and the programmable trigger levels will
give the CPU ample time to empty the Rx FIFO
before an overrun occurs.
characters.
The UART starts the above operations typically
with a Tx interrupt. The chip issues a Tx
interrupt whenever the Tx FIFO is empty and the
Tx interrupt is enabled, except in the following
instance. Assume that the Tx FIFO is empty
and the CPU starts to load it. When the first
byte enters the FIFO the Tx FIFO empty
interrupt will transition from active to inactive.
Depending on the execution speed of the service
routine software, the UART may be able to
transfer this byte from the FIFO to the shift
register before the CPU loads another byte. If
this happens, the Tx FIFO will be empty again
and typically the UART's interrupt line would
transition to the active state. This could cause a
system with an interrupt control unit to record a
Tx FIFO empty condition, even though the CPU
is currently servicing that interrupt.
One side-effect of having a Rx FIFO is that the
selected interrupt trigger level may be above the
data level in the FIFO. This could occur when
data at the end of the block contains fewer bytes
than the trigger level. No interrupt would be
issued to the CPU and the data would remain in
the UART.
To prevent the software from
having to check for this situation the chip
incorporates a timeout interrupt.
The timeout interrupt is activated when there is
a least one byte in the Rx FIFO, and neither the
CPU nor the Rx shift register has accessed the
Rx FIFO within 4 character times of the last
byte. The timeout interrupt is cleared or reset
when the CPU reads the Rx FIFO or another
character enters it.
Therefore, after the first byte has been
loaded into the FIFO the UART will wait one
serial character transmission time before
issuing a new Tx FIFO empty interrupt.
These FIFO related features allow optimization
of CPU/UART transactions and are especially
useful given the higher baud rate capability (256
kbaud).
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SMSC [ SMSC CORPORATION ]
