'Smallest' 1.8V UARTs run at 5Mbps

NXP Semiconductors has announced a high-speed, high-performance 1.8V UART family that supports the VLIO bus specification from Marvell as well as Intel and Motorola bus interfaces.

Said to be the industry's first, this standalone 1.8V UART family touts the smallest packaging currently available on the market. Running at 5Mbps and featuring a 128byte FIFO, the four devices this family fully support advanced connectivity interfaces such as Bluetooth enhanced data rate (EDR) and are suitable for next-generation portable devices running on 1.8V processors.

"The NXP 1.8V UART provides a seamless connection to Marvell's PXA3xx application processor family via the VLIO bus interface," said Gary Forni, director, platform enabling, cellular and handheld business unit, communications and consumer business group at Marvell. "With this high-speed, high-performance 1.8V UART family, NXP has delivered innovation to the interface market for applications requiring high speed options running on Marvell PXAxx platforms."

'Smallest UARTs
The 1.8V UART family is available in a 3.5-by-3.5mm TFBGA packaging to deliver the industry's smallest UART form factor, NXP said, and allow for smaller designs of handheld devices.

This UART family also provides long-distance communications through its automatic RS485 feature and ensures short-range wireless capabilities with its embedded IrDA encoder. These capabilities make this device family suitable for portable devices such as smartphones, handheld gaming and GPS modules that need to interface with Bluetooth EDR and wireless modems.

The NXP 1.8V UART family consists of four devices. SC16C850V and SC16C850L are one-channel UARTs, while SC16C852V and SC16C852L are two-channel UARTs. SC16C850V and SC16C852V support the VLIO interface while SC16C850L and SC16C852L support Intel or Motorola interfaces. In addition, all of the UARTs offer a fractional divider that allows an existing system clock to be used rather than an external crystal.

The NXP 1.8V UARTs are available immediately.