Exar Releases Significant Addition to Industry's Fastest USB UART Product Family

FREMONT, Calif., Sept. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Exar Corporation (Nasdaq: EXAR), announced a new addition, the XR21B1411, to the industry's fastest Full-Speed USB UART series. With +/- 15kV HBM ESD protection, up to 12Mbps serial data rate, optimized software drivers including Microsoft WHQL® certification, and support for very large FIFO sizes, the XR21B1411 delivers flexible and proven design options to system architects.  In addition, Exar has released Exar I/O Lab an innovative design tool developed exclusively for the XR21B1411 which accelerates system design and time-to-market.  

"With on-chip +/-15kV HBM ESD protection on the USB data pins, the XR21B1411 differentiates itself from competitive devices by providing a robust and cost effective solution," said Levent Ozcolak, vice president, Interface Product Line. "With the most extensive UART portfolio available including 8-bit, USB, PCI, PCIe, I2C/SPI, VLIO devices, Exar again solidifies its position as an Interface solution innovator with the addition of the XR21B1411 to our market-proven XR21V14x series."

The XR21B1411 targets a large cross-section of embedded and consumer applications. Examples of embedded applications are gaming systems, ATM machines, and industrial automation systems amongst others. For consumer applications, the series is ideal for smart phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), notebooks, GPS systems, DVD players/recorders and other portable applications.

"For USB bus powered and/or battery operated applications, the XR21B1411 is an ideal fit," said Rakesh Bhatia, senior manager, strategic marketing, Interface Products Line. "It operates from a single 5V power supply and the on-chip +/-15kV HBM ESD feature minimizes the number of external components needed, thereby reducing the Bill-of-Materials (BOM)."  

Device Details

The XR21B1411 has a USB device controller that is compliant with Full-Speed (12Mbps) USB 2.0 specification.  The device has an on-chip one-time programmable (OTP) memory that can be used for customizing the device features through the USB interface. These features include Vendor ID, Product ID, bus-powered mode, self powered mode, remote wakeup support or maximum power consumption values, and default baud rate settings. The device has an array of features including large FIFO sizes of 128-byte TX and 384-byte RX that optimize overall data throughput, automatic hardware (RTS/CTS or DTR/DSR) flow control, automatic software (Xon/Xoff) flow control, and multi-drop mode with auto half-duplex transceiver control.

The XR21B1411 operates from an internal clock that is programmable to 6, 12, 24 or 48 MHz. Therefore, no external crystal / oscillator is required. With the fractional baud rate generator, any baud rate up to 12 Mbps can be accurately generated using the internal clock.  Software drivers for Windows 7, 2000, XP, Vista, CE, Linux, and Mac are supported for the XR21B1411.  

Interface Products

Exar has one of the broadest portfolios of high-performance interface solutions including UARTs,  RS-232, RS-485, and multi-protocol serial transceivers and integrated UART/transceiver combinations. For chip-to-chip or system-to-system connections, Exar's single and multi-channel interface ICs provides immediate competitive advantages to system architects: low power, reduction in board space requirements, increased bandwidth capacity, and enhanced product features. Interface devices are found practically everywhere including point-of-sale (POS) terminals, digital televisions, industrial automation equipment, handheld devices, and networking environments.

About Exar I/O LAB

Exar's I/O Lab is a web-based configuration tool for the XR21B1411.  This Graphical User Interface (GUI) enables the designer to see how the General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) pins are configured at power-up so that they can be tailored to fit the needs of their design.  In addition to setting the GPIOs, the system architects can also configure various USB UART parameters such as Vendor ID, Product ID, Maximum Power Consumption, Remote Wake-up support, Manufacturer Strings, Product Strings, default UART settings, etc.  The configuration file can be downloaded and used to program the XR21B1411 using the software driver and OTP programming GUI provided by Exar. The I/O lab can be accessed at http://www.exar.com/IOLab/.

Evaluation boards, reference designs, and software drivers are available.  With the availability of these tools and Exar's application support line: [email protected], UART customers can accelerate implementation by eliminating driver development, testing and diagnostic procedures.

Prices, Packages, Availability and Additional Information

Samples of the XR21B1411 are available now in a 16-pin 3mm x 3mm QFN at 4.75V-5.25V operation over the industrial temperature range.  In 1k quantities the XR21B1411 is priced at $1.89.  Additional information on this product can be found at http://www.exar.com/Common/Content/ProductDetails.aspx?ID=XR21B1411. Additional information on other Interface products can be found at Interface Products.  

About Exar

Exar Corporation delivers highly differentiated silicon, software and subsystem solutions for industrial, datacom and storage applications. For nearly 40 years, Exar's comprehensive knowledge of end-user markets along with the underlying analog, mixed signal and digital technology has enabled innovative solutions that meet the needs of the evolving connected world. Exar's product portfolio includes power management and interface components, communications products, storage optimization solutions, network security and applied service processors. Exar has locations worldwide providing real-time customer support to drive rapid product development. For more information about Exar, visit: http://www.exar.com

SOURCE Exar Corporation