Specialized Interfaces are physical, electronic connections between devices that have a specific use and adhere to a particular bus standard. They often conform to specific electronic properties and protocols required to interface through a physical medium, connection technique, and networking architecture. They are typically optimized for that job. A unique device or devices that serve as a link between systems or subsystems are used to accomplish this. To facilitate the interface to the bus system used by central processing units (CPUs), such devices have a local bus connection. Additionally, they feature one or more interfaces to link to another physical medium which can as well be a different regional system bus association.
Why are Interface - Specialized Devices Made?
The primary function of an interface is to adapt between bus standards. In addition, they may flag events to the CPUs, buffer data, or even do more complicated tasks like filtering. They can send and receive data using direct access to the system's shared memory (DMA). Typically, interface chips have a set of registers that store configuration data written by a CPU-based software driver. Specialized interface chips are occasionally required to gather data for transmission (scatter-gather DMA), and the protocols support error correction and signal amplification. Additionally, they must have electrical driving characteristics that meet bus specifications.
Benefits of Interface - Specialized
Although many particular purpose serial interfaces have lower bandwidth, they are designed to be inexpensive and power efficient with the least number of connected connections. Both synchronous serial (SPI, I2C) and asynchronous serial (UARTs) protocols fall under this category. Other specialized interfaces are wired or even wireless networking optimized. Ethernet and RS 485 are wired examples. WIFI, Bluetooth, and Zigbee are a few wireless examples of interface specialized.
Applications of Interface - Specialized:
Specialized Interfaces are frequently parallel or serial. Memory buses on computer motherboards are an example of a short-run, very high bandwidth interface that is parallel. These can support very high transfer rates; for instance, as of 2015, GDDR5 chips can sustain 256Gbit/s transfer rates. These interfaces often adhere to low voltage differential standards, have stringent design requirements, and can only be used for small, in-inch-long distances.
