Pericom Semiconductor Corp. added a peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) serial bridge (SBridge) product family offering a one-chip tool for the central processing unit (CPU) to universal asynchronous receiver transmitter (UART) input/output (I/O) market.

The product family integrates a PCIe interface bridge with a multiport, multiprotocol UART controller targeted at volume industrial and building control, point-of-sale, instrumentation, personal digital assistant (PDA) and global positioning system (GPS) I/O applications.

The Pericom SBridge PCIe to UART family consists of three different UART port count configurations: two ports (PI7C9X7952), four ports (PI7C9X7954) and eight ports (PI7C9X7958).

The product family is designed for low power consumption, small package size and optimized printed circuit board (PCB) layout and fully meets the requirements of the latest PCI special interest group (PCI-SIG) PCIe 1.1 and PCI 1.2 specifications. It also is listed on the PCI-SIG certification list.

Other features include:

Backward compatible to 16C550/650/750/850 software.
Supports Baud rates to 62.5 Mbps (sync mode).
Restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances (RoHS) compliant.
Customer-programmable electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) port.
Software drivers for operating systems (OS) - Windows, Linux.

"The UART controller market technology acceptance model (TAM) is expected to grow to over 60 million ports by the end of 2008," according to Jag Bolaria, senior analyst at The Linley Group.

"Pericom is well positioned to capitalize on this growth with leading-edge single-chip solutions required by next-generation embedded control systems," Bolaria said.

Samples, evaluation board and OS driver development kits are available now, with production quantities available in May 2008.