Patent ID: 8631176

Claim:
A method for facilitating asynchronous serial communication by a main processor with at least one external communications device, comprising the steps of: establishing at the main processor a set of blocks of instructions each including at least one instruction for execution by the main processor for accomplishing serial communication, where the set of blocks of instructions include a device Manager Block that establishes communication with an external device, each block having at least one task initiated by at least one instruction, the at least one task running at a prescribed priority, such that the tasks of different blocks have a hierarchical priority; determining whether higher priority tasks are present in the blocks of instructions to be executed, executing the blocks of instructions so that at least one task within each block runs at its respective priority level; and triggering each higher priority task only upon completion of a corresponding lower priority task, wherein an entire serial communication cycle is gated by a lower priority task within the Device Manager block such that serial communication is only allowed to run when other, higher priority tasks in a system of the main processor allow the task of the Device Manager block to run.