Fast synchronous serial bus with master, slave and chip select.
SPI is a synchronous full-duplex bus with SCLK, MOSI, MISO and chip-select per device. Clock polarity and phase give four modes. Speeds of tens of MHz; no addressing so more pins for multiple slaves. Used for flash, displays and ADCs.
An SD card in SPI mode reads at several MB/s.
SPI is fast and simple for connecting sensors, memories and displays on a short board-level link.
Fast synchronous serial bus with master, slave and chip select.
SPI is fast and simple for connecting sensors, memories and displays on a short board-level link.
Typically four: clock, master out slave in, master in slave out and chip select, with one chip select for each slave.
It needs a separate chip select line for each device and has no built-in addressing, so many devices use many pins.
Typical applications include reading an SD card or flash memory with a fast clock, connecting a display controller to a microcontroller and reading a high-speed ADC that streams data after each conversion.
Study "UART" first (topic 64 of 104 in Electronics & Embedded). It covers the groundwork this topic builds on.
Master-slave. Daisy chaining. Higher speed than I²C.
An SD card in SPI mode reads at several MB/s.
The next topic is "I2C", which builds directly on this one.
It is classed as Intermediate in Electronics & Embedded (topic 65 of 104). It is an intermediate topic. Work through the beginner topics in Electronics & Embedded first.
Want to practise? Open the interactive course for quick checks, quizzes, simulations and progress tracking.