24.10 Multi-Processor Communication Mode

Setting the Multi-Processor Communication mode (MPCMn) bit in UCSRnA enables a filtering function of incoming frames received by the USART receiver. Frames that do not contain address information will be ignored and not put into the receive buffer. This effectively reduces the number of incoming frames that have to be handled by the CPU, in a system with multiple MCUs that communicate via the same serial bus. The transmitter is unaffected by the MPCMn setting but has to be used differently when it is a part of a system utilizing the Multi-processor Communication mode.

If the receiver is set up to receive frames that contain five to eight data bits, then the first stop bit indicates if the frame contains data or address information. If the receiver is set up for frames with 9 data bits, then the ninth bit (RXB8) is used for identifying address and data frames. When the frame type bit (the first stop or the ninth bit) is '1', the frame contains an address. When the frame type bit is '0', the frame is a data frame.

The Multi-Processor Communication mode enables several slave MCUs to receive data from a master MCU. This is done by first decoding an address frame to find out which MCU has been addressed. If a particular slave MCU has been addressed, it will receive the following data frames as normal, while the other slave MCUs will ignore the received frames until another address frame is received.