Asynchronous serial transmitter unit
Asynchronous serial transmitter unit for the Icestick board
- Baudrates: 300, 600, 300, 600, 1200, 2400, 4800, 9600, 19200, 38400, 57600, 115200
- Clock frequency: 12Mhz
- Start bits: 1
- Data bits: 8
- Parity: None
- Stop bits: 1
- Description language: Verilog
- Toolchain: Opensource: Yosys, Arachne-pnr, Icestorm project
Serial packages consist of three parts: the start bit, the 8-bit data and the stop bit
Example of the serial transmission of the K character (ASCII 0x4B: Binary: 01001011)
The serial transmitter is encapsulated in the uart-tx entity
The transmitter unit has 4 inputs and 2 outputs:
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Inputs:
- clk: System clock (12MHz in the ICEstick board)
- rstn: Active low. When rstn is 0, the serial unit is reset (synchronous reset)
- start: Start the transmission. When it is a 1, the character from the input data is captured and the transmission begins
- data: 8-bit data to transmit
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Outputs:
- tx: Serial output. The data is sent as a serial package. It is connected to the transmission line
- ready: Transmitter status. When ready is 1, the unit is ready to transmit. A new character can be sent. when it is 0, the unit is busy transmitting the previous character.
The step for transmitting a character are the following:
- Wait until the ready signal is 1
- Place the character in the data input
- Set the start input to 1 (at least for 1 clock cycle)
After that, the unit clears the ready signal and start transmitting the character
