New Industry Products

Intersil Adds New ISL83483/ISL83485 Transceivers

October 22, 2003 by Jeff Shepard

Intersil Corp. (Milpitas, CA) introduced two new LINEARLINK™ RS-485/422 serial data transceivers designed for 3.3V applications. The ISL83483 and ISL83485 operate from a wide ±10% voltage range of +3V to +3.6V, which relaxes supply requirements and reduces costs. Applications for the data transceivers include, but are not limited to, factory automation, security networks and building environmental control.

Both the ISL83483 and ISL83485 are half-duplex transceivers whose receive (Rx) and transmit (Tx) functions are multiplexed, reducing pin count and package size with only eight-leads. A lock-out feature keeps the Rx output disabled, when exiting shutdown, until the Rx has determined what state it should go to. This prevents the Rx output from accidentally generating an interrupt while the Rx wakes up. Although these are 3.3V devices, their logic inputs can be driven with 5V logic levels in mixed-voltage systems.

The ISL83483 is slew-rate limited for error-free data transmission in applications where the data rate is less than 250kbps, typically used for long runs. The ISL83485 can operate up to 10Mbps for high-speed applications. The transceivers are built using the Intersil BiCMOS process and meet both the RS-485 and RS-422 standards for balanced communication.

The ISL83483 and ISL83485 are available now. Suggested resale pricing for 100-unit to 999-unit quantities is $1.21 each for the ISL83483IB (SOIC package) and ISL83483IP (PDIP package), and $1.05 each for the ISL83485IB (SOIC package) and ISL83485IP (PDIP package). Both are available on tape and reel.