Texas Instruments Corporation

Clarence D Lewis

Khodor S Elnashar

Jay T Cantrell

Mahmoud M Yazdani

Brian T Deng

Dinghui Richard Nie

Matthew J DiMarco

A power reduction system for a UART system having a controllable oscillator for producing free-running clock signals. A controlled clock synchronizer having an output terminal is coupled to the oscillator and responsive to both a first control signal thereto and application of the free-running clock signals thereto to provide synchronized pulses and is responsive to both a second control signal different from the first control signal thereto and application of the free-running clock signals thereto to cease production of the synchronized pulses at the output terminal. A UART core controls the oscillator and the clock synchronizer and is operated under control of clock signals from the clock synchronizer. The controllable oscillator includes an inverter having a feedback circuit thereacross including a switch responsive to the third control signal to cause the oscillator to cease oscillation. The synchronizer includes a bistable circuit responsive to the first and second control signals and a gate responsive to the bistable circuit and the clock signals for controlling the status of the synchronized pulses at the output terminal.

Power reduction for UART applications in standby mode

A method and apparatus for a circuit physically realizing a Universal Asynchronous Receive/Transmit (UART) circuit 31, 40 having an automatic flow control feature. A preferred embodiment includes a UART 31 provided with additional control circuitry 39, 34 for automatically pausing transfers from the transmit data circuitry 35, 32 in response to a transition at the CTS (Clear to Send) input, and further provided with control circuitry 39 for automatically asserting and deasserting a RTS (Ready to Send) output when a receiver data threshold is reached.

Universal asynchronous receive/transmit circuit with flow control

An improved data sampling system for sampling data transmission in a computer system includes a reference clock, a delay locked loop circuit, a packet enable circuit, a delayed selector control circuit, a sample selector, and a sample circuit. The devices may be constructed on a single semiconductor substrate and may be connected to a bus structure having a microcomputer and a plurality of boards coupled to it. The delay locked loop circuit generates accurate delayed clock signals based on the reference clock. A positive edge synchronizer circuit, within the delay locked loop, serves as a programmable phase adjust for the sampling system. The positive edge synchronizer ensures proper phase relationship between the chosen delayed clock signal and the incoming data across semiconductor process variations. Packet enable circuit informs the delayed control circuit and the sample circuit when a start bit or stop bit is initiated in a data packet and enables those circuit blocks accordingly. The delayed selector control circuit uses the delayed clock signals to detect a start bit on a data signal. The delayed selector control circuit employs the data signal, delayed appropriately, as a metastability hardener to eliminate potential metastability problems associated with coincident data and delay locked loop signal waveforms. The sample selector, in response to detection of the start bit by the delayed selector control circuit, selects two sampling signals from the delay locked loop circuit for even bit and odd bit sampling in the sample circuit.

Packet data recovery system

A glitch filter identifies and eliminates positive edge and negative edge glitches without utilizing a high frequency sampling clock. The glitch filter comprises a programmable delay buffer string, two multiple input AND gates and a latch. The buffer string provides a plurality of incrementally delayed signals and utilizes them as signal samples thus simulating a high frequency sampling clock. The two multiple input AND gates serve to eliminate positive or negative edge glitches. The latch outputs the accurate filtered data without any positive or negative edge glitches.

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Richardson, TX, United States of America

Clarence D Lewis