 Hello, and welcome to this presentation of the STM32 Serial Peripheral Interface. The internal serial peripheral interface, or SPI, provides a simple communication interface allowing the microcontroller to communicate with external devices. This interface is highly configurable to support many standard protocols. Applications benefit from the simple and direct connection to components which requires a few pins. Thanks to the highly configurable capabilities of the SPI, many devices can be simply accommodated in the existing project. The STM32 SPI offers various operating modes that are explained in more detail in this presentation. The communication speed can't exceed half of the internal bus frequency, and a minimum of two wires is required to provide the serial data flow synchronized by clock serial in a single direction. An optional hardware slave select control signal can be added. The data size and transmit shift order are configurable as well as the clock signal, polarity, and phase. At the protocol level, the user can use specific data buffers with an automatic cyclic redundancy check or CRC calculation and transfers through the DMA controller. There are a wide range of SPI events that can generate interrupt requests. The simplified SPI block diagram shows the basic control mechanisms and functions. There are four I.O. signals associated with the SPI peripheral. All of the data passes through receive and transmit buffers via their specific interfaces. The control block features are enabled or disabled depending on the configuration. The SPI master always controls the bus traffic and provides the clock signal to the dedicated slave through the SCK line. The master can select the slave it wants to communicate with through the optional slave select or NSS signal. Data stored in the dedicated shift registers can be exchanged synchronously between the master and slave through the MOSI, master output, slave input, and the MISO, master input, slave output, data lines. In full duplex mode, both data lines are used and synchronous data flows in both directions. In simplex mode, one node transmits data while the other receives the data. Data only flows in one direction. Depending on the communication direction, only one data line is used. Unused SPI pins can be used for other purposes. Half duplex mode integrates the previous two modes with sharing a single line for data exchanges and data flows in a single direction at a time. There is a cross connection between the master MOSI and the slave MISO pins in this mode. The master and slave have to alternate their transmitter and receiver roles synchronously when having a common data line. It is common to add a serial resistor on the half duplex data line to prevent possible temporary short circuit connection since master and slave nodes are not usually synchronized. When the SPI network includes more than one slave, a star topology is commonly used. The master communicates with one slave at a time since you can only have one slave transmit data back to the master through the common MISO pin. In this topology, a separated slave select signal from the master has to be provided to each slave node, so the master can select which slave to communicate with. Thanks to separate slave select signals or NSSs, SPI data and clock format can be adapted for each slave if the multiple slave nodes do not have a common configuration. Another multi-slave configuration is the circular topology where the inputs and outputs of all the nodes are connected together in a closed serial chain. A common slave select signal is used for all the nodes as communication occurs at the same time. All nodes must have the same data and clock format configuration. Microcontroller SPI nodes typically use separate internal transmit and receive shift registers, so the data transferred between them has to be handled by software in a circular mode. SPI networks can operate in a multi-master environment. This mode is used to connect two master nodes exclusively. When either node is not active, they are by default in a slave mode. When one node wants to take control of the bus, it switches itself into master mode and asserts the slave select signal on the other node through a GPIO pin. Both slave select NSS pins work as a hardware input to detect potential bus collisions between nodes as only one can master the SPI bus at a single time. After the session is done, the active node master releases the slave select signal and returns back to passive slave mode waiting for the next session start. There are a few controls that are used to set up the data format. Users can define the data frame size and the transmit order of the shift register. The clock can be set to one of four basic configurations defined in the Motorola SPI specifications. The combination of two bits controls the polarity and phase of the clock signal. When the phase control bit is cleared, data bits are sampled on the odd clock edges and the even clock edges synchronize the shifting of the next bit onto the data line. This is the opposite when the phase control bit is set. The clock polarity bit defines the idle state of the clock signal and which clock edge is used for data sampling or shifting. When the communication speed is fast and data frame short, it could be a demanding task to ensure a correct data flow when the clock signal becomes continuous and the full duplex mode is used. Slave nodes have to properly service all the transactions sent by the master properly to prevent any data overrun or underrun conditions. When the data frame size fits into a byte, packing mode can be used. Then multiple data patterns can be written or read in a single access to the FIFO registers. Together with the proper setting of the FIFO threshold event, the number of events to surface will decrease to better control the data flow. When the DMA controller is also used, overall loading on the system is significantly reduced. This figure shows how two short 4-bit data frames can be written and read by a single 16-bit access in the dedicated FIFO registers. The read or write data access requires just a single service event. The SPI peripheral features two 32-bit FIFOs to handle the data flow. The FIFOs can be accessed by using either 8-bit or 16-bit data instructions. During reception, the event generated from the FIFO depends on the threshold setting Rx and E. The table gives an overview of how the event flag behavior changes depending on the configuration. It is important to keep the FIFO access balanced with the threshold setting so the data consistency is not lost. During transmission, the transmit FIFO occupancy or TXLVL depends on data access. There is a specific event behavior when the transmit FIFO occupancy is higher than half. During transmission, the transmit FIFO occupancy or FTLVL and its availability to accept next data or TXE depends on data access. When an 8-bit access is used to store the next data to the upper half of the FIFO while its bottom half is already occupied, the FIFO status becomes full or FTLVL equals 11 and the system prevents any new access to the FIFO TXE equals zero, though there is still room available for a new single 8-bit access. The reason is to prevent any new accidental 16-bit access and so any loss of data at this situation. That is why the FIFO capability can never be fully used when an 8-bit data access is applied for data transmission. During protocol level communication, the DMA controller can be used to handle the data flow events, the CRC calculations and the updating of the FIFO threshold automatically. In case of threshold control, the last odd data frame is correctly applied in packed mode when the number of frames is not aligned with the packet size. If the CRC is enabled, separated CRC calculators are used for the transmitter and receiver. The CRC calculation result is applied at the end of each transfer automatically by the DMA controller or by software control. Results from the transmitter CRC calculator register are loaded directly into the shift register and the received CRC value is stored in the FIFO and compared with the receiver CRC result. The CRC polynomial used for the calculation is programmable and the length of the CRC pattern can be set to either 8 or 16-bit frames. The slave select signal is commonly used by the master node to select the slave node for communication. The slave select signal is always mandatory in multi-master topology and mostly in multi-slave topologies too except for some very rare and specific cases. For example, when all the slaves receive the same data while no more than one slave is transmitter or when slaves are connected in a daisy chain structure. Though the slave select signal implementation is not always necessary, it could be helpful for data flow synchronization in any case. The slave select signal can operate as an input or as an output. The NSS input can be managed by hardware or software depending on the SSM bit in either master or slave modes. As a slave input, it is used to identify itself as the active slave for communication. As a master input, it signals a potential conflict between masters in a multi-master system. The NSS working as an output is only used in master mode and is managed by hardware in a standard or specific control mode. Additional slave select outputs can be provided by the GPIOs under software control. There are a few enhanced modes when the slave select signal is under specific hardware control. The slave select signal can operate in a pulse mode where the master generates pulses on NSS output signals between data frames for a duration of one SPI clock period when there is a continuous transfer of data. The data is then interleaved by two SPI clock periods. The clock phase is fixed in this mode. Another enhanced mode is the TI mode where the data flow is synchronized by the NSS pulses provided by the master on the last bit of data. The clock polarity and phase configuration is fixed and the slave data output is automatically switched into high impedance when the bus traffic stops and on a specific configurable timeout. Here is an overview of the SPI interrupt events. There are FIFO and error detection events to handle data flows. DMA requests are triggered internally by FIFO threshold events. Here is an overview of the SPI status in specific low power modes. The device is not able to perform any communication in stop or standby modes. It is important to ensure that all the SPI traffic is complete before the peripheral enters stop or powered down modes. The SPI performance depends mainly on the applied clock. At a minimum, the clock frequency should be twice the required communication frequency. The actual rate of communication can be decreased by application factors. The user has to consider SPI bus loads such as the number of nodes, the connection distance, the input capacitance, as well as the GPIO settings. Fast GPI mode should be applied on the data and clock signals. Lower power supply voltage and extreme ambient temperatures slow down edges. Sometimes slower data hold or setup time requirements have to be respected between nodes. Applications can't always manage the fast data flow due to frequent servicing of exceptions. The SPI can be used in a wide range of applications where a simple data transfer is required without the need for a complex communication protocol. Secured transfers are also supported when used with smart cards. There is a comprehensive summary of basic common tips, more details the user can find in the product reference manual. Users should follow specific procedures checking if any traffic is still running on the bus before low power mode is applied or the peripheral clock is removed to prevent any premature termination of such a transaction flow. It can be ongoing for a time after the DMA channel signalizes transaction complete status or the transmit FIFO becomes empty. The DMA controller should be used to terminate a transaction when a specific control has to be applied which handles CRC or receive FIFO threshold or in receive only mode. Such a control window has to be applied within a short time window available within the last but one data frame transaction exclusively. This ensures the transaction is for the correct amount of data. When DMA and or data packet frames are applied the number of services required to handle the data flow decreases significantly so the system's overall performance increases. This is an effective approach in particular cases where data frames are short the bus communication speed is fast and the data flow is continuous. Hardware management of the NSS pin is not quite necessary when a master communicates with a single slave but it can help to synchronize the data flow between them. There are some additional specific aspects which should be taken into account when designing an SPI network. The receiver always loads CRC information into the receive FIFO. The user has to take into account the additional space needed in the FIFO and to be careful of the CRC information flushing from it. The busy flag should not be used for any data handling but to check the bus traffic stop when terminating a transaction. The BSY bit is not cleared between data frames during the master continuous data transactions. It always goes low for at least one SPI clock cycle between data frames in slave mode no matter whether or not the communication is continuous. When the node transmits data only the receive chain always stays active. Users should ignore all the associated receive and overrun events in this case. When including the CRC the amount of data to be processed by the DMA controller depends on the transfer mode. The number has to be set differently for transmitter and receiver in a full duplex mode. A specific setting has to be applied for receive only mode. There are six SPI instances within the STM32F7 and each support all the features presented so far. SPI1, SPI2 and SPI3 are multiplexed with the I2S interface. There are some dedicated SPI application notes. To learn more about general SPI connections and interface issues there are many web pages as well as SPI bus monitoring tools available. Many digital oscilloscopes support direct reading and analysis of data and clock signals on the SPI bus. Refer to these other trainings which are linked directly to the SPI. Users should be familiar with all the peripherals that can affect the behavior of the SPI.