Another significant feature of this device driver is its exploitation of the Extended Hardware Buffering capabilities of the serial communications devices in many IBM systems and option adapters. Extended Hardware Buffering refers to the ability of the serial device servicing a COM port to buffer in hardware several characters, and to release them all at one time on the occurrence of a single transmit or receive hardware interrupt. This capability significantly reduces the interrupt-driven I/O processing overhead required to service Transmit and Receive requests on a given COM port. On the devices that support the Extended Hardware Buffering capability, this significantly improves COM I/O throughput and improves data integrity for higher data-transfer rates.

The Extended Hardware Buffering capabilities are automatically controlled under the default modes of the physical ASYNC device driver. Automatic Protocol Override is a feature of the OS/2 ASYNC device driver that automatically controls parameters relating to Extended Hardware Buffering. Systems and Adapters that incorporate the FIFO-mode hardware feature in a manner fully compatible with the NS-16550A UART are automatically enabled to run in Automatic Protocol Override mode.