What is the Full Form of UART ?

UART – Universal Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitter

Universal Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitter, pronounced as u-art, is a computer hardware component used to handle asynchronous serial communication. Every computer has a UART chip that handles the incoming and outgoing network traffic.

Practically, the ‘net’ internet speed not only depends on “how fast your modem is”, but also on the data handling capacity of the UART chip installed in your computer system. If the data handling capacity of UART chip is less than what you modem supports, it will result in a bottleneck for your system.

How does a UART chip work
The device takes data from a computer system in the form of bytes (Parallel), breaks it into bits (Serial) and forwards it to the modem. At the receiving end, the receiver’s modem sends the data to the UART chip installed on the receiver’s computer system. The chip then combines this series of bits into bytes.

As the name suggests, Universal Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitter is used to handle Asynchronous communication. There is another version of a UART chip known as USART (universal synchronous/asynchronous receiver/transmitter). It handles both synchronous as well as asynchronous data transmission.