I/O controllers embed into industrial designs

A new family of I/O controllers will enable system design engineers to standardise on a single part across a wide range of applications with similar characteristics.

A new family of I/O controllers will enable system design engineers to standardise on a single part across a wide range of applications with similar characteristics.

Achieving a new level of integration that reduces overall system costs, SMSC provides the necessary scalability across product and system designs.

"The SCH3112, SCH3114, SCH3116 family provides our customers with incredible value by combining critical system functionality normally requiring multiple parts into single devices".

"Through intelligent integration, we are enabling the lowest system cost possible while reducing board real estate requirements", said Rob Stein, Vice President of Marketing Embedded I/O Products at SMSC.

"Utilising our best-in-class engineering prowess in mixed-signal design, these devices also allow our customers to achieve the highest thermal monitoring accuracy in an integrated device found in the market today with the industry's first industrial temperature rated embedded I/O controllers".

Through high levels of integration, embedded applications can now take advantage of up to six fully functional universal asynchronous receiver-transmitters (UARTs), eliminating the need for two separate I/O devices or discrete UART ICs.

By increasing the number of serial ports, SMSC is addressing not only board constraint issues, but is also providing opportunities for bill-of-material cost reductions because it does not require additional components.

Overall, the new embedded I/O controllers provide up to 70% savings in board space through their space-efficient 128-pin VTQFP packaging.

This is critical as the embedded motherboard market drives toward smaller form factors.

In addition, the integration of reset generators further reduces system costs.

By having this feature integrated into the embedded I/O controller, SMSC can deliver up to a 40% cost savings when compared with designs using a discrete component.

SMSC's reset generator implementation allows for variable pulsewidths and incorporates a watchdog timer and critical temperature trigger that provides the ability to work across multiple platforms with different system requirements.

Thermal and voltage monitoring has become critical as it relates to those designs targeted for rugged industrial computer systems.

To deliver a more reliable and robust offering, SMSC has developed hardware and thermal monitoring capabilities that deliver the industry's most accurate thermal sensing at 1.5C for an integrated device.

Customers can now build a system that optimises the temperature and acoustic specifications required in today's embedded and computing environments.

Key features of the SCH3112, SCH3114, SCH3116 controllers include: industrial temperature rating (-40 to +85C); up to six fully functional 16C550 serial ports with datarates up to 1.5Mbit/ss and RS485 auto direction control mode; thermal sensing with 1.5C accuracy; programmable automatic fan control based on multiple temperature zones; resume and main power reset generator with watchdog timer and critical temperature trigger; power button and AC failure recovery control thermal trip signal for overtemperature indication; and 40 general purpose I/O pins (six with VID compatible inputs).

Samples of the SCH3112, SCH3114 and the SCH3116 are available now with production quantities available in the fourth quarter of this year.

Pricing will start at $6.30, $8.10 and $9.90 per unit (US list price), respectively, in 10,000-unit quantities.

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