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Lucent Technologies Inc.
9
Advance Data Sheet
October 2000
T8538A Quad Programmable Codec
Functional Description
Clocking Considerations
The PCM bus uses BCLK as the bit clock and the one-
going edge of FS to determine the location of the
beginning of a frame. These two clocks must be
derived from the same source. Internally, the device
develops all the internal clocks with a phase-locked
loop that uses BCLK as the timing source. BCLK and
FS must be continuously present and without gaps in
order for the device to operate correctly.
DCLK is used to clock the internal serial interface and
may be asynchronous to the other clocks. There is no
need to derive this clock from the same source as the
other clocks. The serial bus may be operated at any
speed up to 4.096 Mbits/s (16.000 Mbits/s if the
write
all channels
command is not used). DCLK can be
gapped. There is no limit on the number of devices on
the same serial bus.
The Control Interface
The device is controlled via a series of memory loca-
tions accessed by a serial data connection to the exter-
nal master controller. This interface operates using the
chip select lead to enable transmission of information.
All chip functions are enabled or disabled by setting or
clearing bits in the control memory. Filter coefficients
and gain adjustments are also stored in this memory.
The codec has both a serial input lead and a serial out-
put lead. These may be used individually for a 4-wire
serial interface, or tied together for a 2-wire interface.
The line driver circuitry is capable of driving relatively
high currents so that in the event that the line is long
enough to show significant transmission line effects, it
can be terminated in the characteristic impedance at
each end with resistors to V
CC
and ground.
All data transfers on the serial bus are byte oriented
with the least significant bit (shown in this data sheet as
bit 0) transmitted first, followed by the more significant
bits. For data fields, the least significant byte of the first
data byte is transmitted first, followed by the more sig-
nificant bytes, each byte transmitted LSB first. This for-
mat is compatible with the serial port on most
microcontrollers.
Modes
There are two different modes of operation for the
serial interface: the normal mode and the byte-by-byte
mode. These two modes differ in the data clocking and
the manner in which CS is used to control the transfer.
Note that the CS lead is used to control the transfer of
serial data from master controller to slave codec and in
the reverse direction.
In normal mode (INTS pin open), the CS lead must go
low for the duration of the transfer. Also DCLK must be
continuous for normal mode operation. DI is latched on
a negative going clock edge. The only error check per-
formed by the codec is to verify that CS is low for an
integral number of bytes. Detection of an active (active-
low) chip select for other than an integral multiple of
8 bits results in the operation being terminated. The
next active excursion of chip select will be interpreted
as a new command; hence, the serial I/O interface can
always be initialized by asserting CS for a number of
clock periods that is not an integral multiple of 8. CS is
captured using DCLK, so DCLK must be transitioned to
perform this initialization.
The byte-by-byte mode (INTS pin tied to ground) uses
CS to control each byte of the transfer. In this mode,
CS goes low for exactly 8 bits at a time, corresponding
to a 1-byte transfer either to or from the codec chip.
DCLK can be continuous, but only needs to be present
to clock commands and data bits when CS is low
(gapped clock). When using a gapped clock, DCLK can
remain high or low when CS is high. DI is latched on a
positive going clock edge. Repeated transitions of CS
are used to control subsequent bytes of data to/from
the codec. For a write command in this mode, CS must
go low for each byte of the transfer until the transfer is
complete. For a read command, CS will go low for each
of the 3 bytes of the read command transferred to the
device, then low again for each byte to be read. Notice
that the total number of bytes transferred (and excur-
sions on CS) is N + 3, where N is the number of bytes
to be read in the command. This mode of operation is
useful in cases where the master is a microprocessor
with a built-in UART that transfers 1 byte at a time.
Error detection is limited to detection of an active CS
for other than an integral multiple of 8 bits. Recovery is
the same as normal mode.
Flow control can be accomplished by suspending the
transitions on DCLK by holding either state. During the
data transfer, CS must remain low while clock transi-
tions are suspended with DCLK in either state.