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SC16C850
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NXP B.V. 2010. All rights reserved.
Product data sheet
Rev. 2 — 11 November 2010
9 of 55
NXP Semiconductors
SC16C850
2.5 to 3.3 V UART with 128-byte FIFOs and IrDA encoder/decoder
6.
Functional description
The SC16C850 provides serial asynchronous receive data synchronization,
parallel-to-serial and serial-to-parallel data conversions for both the transmitter and
receiver sections. These functions are necessary for converting the serial data stream into
parallel data that is required with digital data systems. Synchronization for the serial data
stream is accomplished by adding start and stop bits to the transmit data to form a data
character (character orientated protocol). Data integrity is ensured by attaching a parity bit
to the data character. The parity bit is checked by the receiver for any transmission bit
errors. The electronic circuitry to provide all these functions is fairly complex, especially
when manufactured on a single integrated silicon chip. The SC16C850 represents such
an integration with greatly enhanced features. The SC16C850 is fabricated with an
advanced CMOS process.
The SC16C850 is an upward solution to the SC16C650B that provides a single UART
capability with 128 bytes of transmit and receive FIFO memory, instead of 32 bytes for the
SC16C650B and 16 bytes in the SC16C550B. The SC16C850 is designed to work with
high speed modems and shared network environments that require fast data processing
time. Increased performance is realized in the SC16C850 by the transmit and receive
FIFOs. This allows the external processor to handle more networking tasks within a given
time. In addition, the four selectable receive and transmit FIFO trigger interrupt levels are
provided in 16C650 mode, or 128 programmable levels are provided in the extended
mode for maximum data throughput performance especially when operating in a
memory greatly reduces the bandwidth requirement of the external controlling CPU and
increases performance. A low power pin (LOWPWR) is provided to further reduce power
consumption by isolating the host bus interface.
The SC16C850 is capable of operation up to 5 Mbit/s with an external 80 MHz clock. With
a crystal, the SC16C850 is capable of operation up to 1.5 Mbit/s.
The rich feature set of the SC16C850 is available through internal registers. These
features are: selectable and programmable receive and transmit FIFO trigger levels,
selectable TX and RX baud rates, and modem interface controls, and are all standard
features. Following a power-on reset, an external reset, or a software reset, the
SC16C850 is software compatible with the previous generation, SC16C550B, and
SC16C650B.
6.1 UART selection
The UART provides the user with the capability to bidirectionally transfer information
between an external CPU, the SC16C850 package, and an external serial device. A
logic 0 (LOW) on chip select pin CS allows the user to configure, send data, and/or
Table 3.
Serial port selection (Intel interface)
H = HIGH; L = LOW.
Chip Select
Function
CS = H
none
CS = L
UART select