Direction Change

In order to ensure correct timing for half duplex UART operation, the UPDI has a built-in Guard Time mechanism to relax the timing when changing direction from RX mode to TX mode. The Guard Time is a number of IDLE bits inserted before the next Start bit is transmitted. The number of IDLE bits can be configured through GTVAL in UPDI.CTRLA. The duration of each IDLE bit is given by the baud rate used by the current transmission.

It is not recommended to use GTVAL setting 0x7, with no additional IDLE bits.

Figure 1. UPDI Direction Change by Inserting IDLE Bits

The UPDI Guard Time is the minimum IDLE time that the connected debugger will experience when waiting for data from the UPDI. Because of the asynchronous interface to the system, as presented in Clocks, the ratio between the UPDI clock and the system clock will affect the synchronization time, and how long it takes before the UPDI can transmit data. In the cases where the synchronization delay is shorter than the current Guard Time setting, the Guard Time will be given by GTVAL directly.