Holt Integrated Circuits, a world leader in data bus IC's for commercial and military avionics, announced today a new and innovative product, the HI-3200, a data management IC for ARINC 429 and ARINC 825 (CAN) bus traffic. The HI-3200 can operate as an autonomous bridge between the ARINC 429 buses and the ARINC 825 bus. Alternatively it provides powerful resources for handling data flow on either bus alone. Bus interfaces include 8 receive and 4 transmit ARINC 429 channels and one transmit/receive ARINC 825 (CAN) channel.

A key feature of the HI-3200 is all channels operate autonomously, allowing the host CPU to send and receive data on multiple buses, with the ability to automatically reformat, re-label, re-packetize and redirect data from any of the receive channels for transmission on any of the ARINC 429 and/or ARINC 825 buses. Integral 32K x 8 on-board memory stores multiple received messages and message data uploaded by the host CPU, freeing up the host for other tasks. In addition, ARINC 429 payload bits may be monitored on device pins, reducing the need to access the device RAM. The HI-3200 communicates with the external CPU via a four wire Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI).

The auto-initialization feature uploads configuration settings from an external EEPROM on reset for rapid start-up and operation without a host CPU. This requires no software overhead or host initialization programming, simplifying DO-178 or DO-254 certification.

"The HI-3200 allows complete flexibility in data management. It can selectively filter ARINC 429 or ARINC 825 messages, automatically schedule messages on either bus and construct data packets from scratch or by repackaging received data," said Anthony Murray, Director of Business Development at Holt.

Also available is the HI-3210, which is identical in functionality to the HI-3200, but without the ARINC 825 (CAN) interface. Samples are available upon request.