The SN74ABT3612 is a high-speed, low-power BiCMOS bidirectional clocked FIFO memory. It supports clock frequencies up to 67 MHz and has read access times as fast as 10 ns. Two independent 64 × 36 dual-port SRAM FIFOs in this device buffer data in opposite directions. Each FIFO has flags to indicate empty and full conditions and two programmable flags (almost-full and almost-empty) to indicate when a selected number of words is stored in memory. Communication between each port can bypass the FIFOs via two 36-bit mailbox registers. Each mailbox register has a flag to signal when new mail has been stored. Parity is checked passively on each port and can be ignored if not desired. Parity generation can be selected for data read from each port. Two or more devices can be used in parallel to create wider datapaths.

The SN74ABT3612 is a clocked FIFO, which means each port employs a synchronous interface. All data transfers through a port are gated to the low-to-high transition of a port clock by enable signals. The clocks for each port are independent of one another and can be asynchronous or coincident. The enables for each port are arranged to provide a simple bidirectional interface between microprocessors and/or buses with synchronous control.

The full flag (FFA\, FFB\) and almost-full (AFA\, AFB\) flag of a FIFO are two-stage synchronized to the port clock that writes data to its array. The empty flag (EFA\, EFB\) and almost-empty (AEA\, AEB\) flag of a FIFO are two-stage synchronized to the port clock that reads data from its array.

The SN74ABT3612 is characterized for operation from 0°C to 70°C.

For more information on this device family, see the following application reports:

• FIFO Mailbox-Bypass Registers: Using Bypass Registers to Initialize DMA Control (literature number SCAA007)
• Parity-Generate and Parity-Check Features for High-Bandwidth-Computing FIFO Applications
  (literature number SCAA015)
• Metastability Performance of Clocked FIFOs (literature number SCZA004)