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Fremont, California, June 25, 2001 - Exar Corporation (Nasdaq: EXAR), a leading provider of high-performance, mixed-signal silicon solutions for the worldwide communications infrastructure, today announced the fifth generation of its Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter (UART) product family with the quad (four-channel) XR16L784. It is targeted at network management, point-of-sale terminals (POS), factory automation, and process control applications.
“Exar’s latest generation of UARTs strengthens our market position as the leading provider of data communications devices ” said Dr. Roubik Gregorian, senior vice president, general manager, Exar Communication Division, and Exar's chief technology officer. “This new device is ideal for several growing data communications markets.”
Product Details
The new device provides industry standard 8-bit data bus interface to serial port capabilities. The XR16L784 supports 3.3V and 5V operation with 5V tolerant inputs, and allows direct interface to the system bus without buffers. This capability can both reduce a system’s cost and silicon footprint. In addition, it has a global interrupt source registers that will monitor and report: which UART channel has an interrupt service, and which UART channel transmitter or receiver requires servicing. This feature is crucial for multiple serial port designs, and increases the efficiency of the operating system’s device driver.
Also, it offers automatic RS485 half-duplex direction control with programmable turn-around delay simplifies hardware and software design, and compensates for the customary signal propagation delay in long cable length network installations.
The XR16L784 enables the transfer of more data bytes in each interrupt service thus reducing CPU bandwidth requirements, and the RTS/CTS or DTR/DSR automatic hardware and software flow control feature maximizes data throughput for higher system performance.
The internal registers include the industry standard 16C550, and Exar's enhanced registers for the additional requirements of today's data communications market. The XR16L784 has programmable TX and RX FIFO trigger levels, wireless infrared (IrDA) encoder/decoder, device identification, and sleep mode wake indicator. The device has 64 bytes of TX and RX FIFOs in each UART channel, and is capable of operating up to serial data rates of 3 Mbps.
Prices, Packages and Availability
Samples of the XR16L784, offered in the 64-pin TQFP package, supporting commercial and industrial ranges are available now. In 1,000 piece quantities, the XR16L784 CV pricing is $12.00 and assumes only a commercial temperature range.
About Exar
Exar Corporation (NASDAQ: EXAR) designs, develops and markets high-performance, high-bandwidth analog and mixed-signal silicon solutions for the worldwide communications infrastructure. Leveraging its industry-proven analog design expertise, system-level knowledge and standard CMOS process technologies, Exar provides OEMs innovative ICs addressing wide area network (WAN) transmission standards such as T/E carrier, ATM and SONET. Additionally, Exar offers ICs for both the serial communications and the video and imaging markets. The Company is based in Fremont, CA, had fiscal 2001 revenues of $113 million, and employs approximately 288 people worldwide. For more information about Exar, visit http://www.exar.com
Greg Kaufman (510) 668-7121
greg.kaufman@exar.com