Serial port having only a single terminal for information transfer to and from an integrated circuit
US5920708A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Jan 26, 1996 |
| Grant date | Jul 6, 1999 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jan 26, 2016 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F13/4295
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A host adapter integrated circuit that contains data transfer modules has a serial port that uses a single serial port pin to communicate with a slave serial port input-output integrated circuit that interfaces to various resources that are included in a support circuit. The serial port forms a packet from each byte of information to be transferred from a module to the slave device by adding a start bit before the byte, followed by a parity bit at the end of the byte and followed by a stop bit. After transmitting the packet, the serial port waits for an acknowledge packet from the slave serial port input-output integrated circuit, for example for two clock cycles after transmission of the packet. For synchronous operation, a common oscillator drives the clock signal on the slave serial port input-output integrated circuit and host adapter integrated circuit. The serial port pin in the host adapter integrated circuit is connected to a shifter circuit in the serial port that serially clocks data from the serial port pin and passes the data parallelly to a bus in the host adapter integrated circuit and vice versa.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.