“We were stunned at the performance difference between brands of multiport USB to serial adapters.” Design architecture is the critical element”
Findings
There is a significant difference in performance between the “Sealevel architecture” and “industry average architecture” for USB serial adapters. Performance testing of 8-port USB serial adapters proved that the architecture determines the maximum baud rate and more importantly, the throughput of connected serial devices.
The “Sealevel architecture” uses a USB UART interface that delivers significantly faster and more reliable communications.
The “industry average architecture” 8-port USB serial adapter utilizes a USB microcontroller and a single FPGA wired to all eight serial ports. The interface between the microcontroller and FPGA creates a bottleneck because the serial devices are sharing the throughput of the microcontroller. As a result, each additional serial device added substantially reduces the speed of all eight serial ports.
Learn how multiport USB serial architecture affects your applications in our Test Report: Impact of Architecture on Performance of USB to Serial Adapters (pdf) white paper. Download the file below.
All Sealevel USB serial adapters have a dedicated USB UART design. Click on the link to see our full line of USB serial adapters.