SPI protocol

Protocol introduction

The Serial Peripheral interface (SPI) is a synchronous serial communication interface specification used for short-distance communication, primarily in embedded systems.

SPI devices communicate in full duplex mode using a master-slave architecture usually with a single master. The master (controller) device originates the frame for reading and writing. Multiple slave-devices may be supported through selection with individual chip select (CS), sometimes called slave select (SS) lines.

Interface

The SPI bus specifies four logic signals

• SCLK: Serial Clock (output from master)
• MOSI: Master Out Slave In (data output from master)
• MISO: Master In Slave Out (data output from slave)
• CS /SS : Chip/Slave Select (output from master to indicate that data is being sent)

MOSI on master connects to MOSI on slave. MISO on master connects to MISO on slave.

Clock polarity and phase

SPI has 4 operating modes that correspond to the four possible clocking configurations. These configurations are defined with the clock polarity (CPOL) and clock phase (CPHA).

• Mode 0: Data is sampled on the rising edge of the clock pulse with a non-inverted clock polarity (CPOL = 0, CPHA = 0)
• Mode 1: Data is sampled on the falling edge of the clock pulse with a non-inverted clock polarity (CPOL = 0, CPHA = 1)
• Mode 2: Data is sampled on the falling edge of the clock pulse with an inverted clock polarity (CPOL = 1, CPHA = 0)
• Mode 3: Data is sampled on the rising edge of the clock pulse with an inverted clock polarity (CPOL = 1, CPHA = 1)

Independent slave configuration

In the independent slave configuration, there is an independent chip select line for each slave. The master asserts only one chip select at a time. Since the MISO pins of all slaves are connected together, they are required to be tri-state pins (high, low or high-impedance), where the high-impedance output must be applied when the slave is not selected.

Daisy chain configuration

Some products that implement SPI may be connected in a daisy chain configuration, the first slave output being connected to the second slave input, etc. The SPI port of each slave is designed to send out during the second group of clock pulses an exact copy of the data it received during the first group of clock pulses. The whole chain acts as a communication shift register; daisy chaining is often done with shift registers to provide a bank of inputs or outputs through SPI. Each slave copies input to output in the next clock cycle until active low SS line goes high. Such a feature only requires a single SS line from the master, rather than a separate SS line for each slave.

SPI protocol in Typhoon HIL toolchain

Currently, SPI Slave functionality in Typhoon HIL is implemented either directly on the HIL device (supported by the following Typhoon HIL devices: HIL101, HIL404, HIL506, and HIL606) or through the ACE board (Automotive Communication Extender).

If SPI is used via the HIL device, it is implemented using the GPIO connector. This limits the use of the protocol to the devices that have this type of connector. Information regarding the available ports for each HIL device model is documented in each device's General Specifications section in the Hardware Manual. The pinout for the GPIO connector per HIL device is also detailed there in the Mechanical section.

If SPI is used via the ACE board, the HIL device connects to the ACE board through an Ethernet connection, while the SPI protocol itself is implemented using the GPIO pins on the ACE board (described in Automotive Communication Extender card pinouts).

ACE SPI Setup

The ACE SPI setup component is shown in Figure 1. It is used for configuring the SPI controllers located on the Automotive Communication Extender (ACE). Each ACE device has 4 SPI controllers.

SPI Slave

The SPI Slave component implements the Slave part of the SPI protocol. This component is used to configure the SPI Slave operating mode as described in the Protocol introduction, define the Register map and define the message frames.

Message frames

These message frames have customizable structures which can be defined based on user requirements. For the structure to be functional, it has to follow these requirements:

• Write and read frames must contain Command and Address parts
• Write and output frames must contain a Register data field
• Command and Address parts of the write and read frame must start from the same bit and have the same length
• If the output frame is sent in the next message, read and write frames must have a size greater or equal to the size of the output frame
• The start bit of the first part in the Output frame should be equal to the total size of the Read frame

Register map

The Register map defines the list of registers on the Slave device, their addresses, types, lengths and Endianness. These registers define inputs and outputs of the SPI Slave component.

Accessing registers

Register data can be accessed using the user-defined register address or the addresses generated for each byte of a register. These addresses are automatically generated based on the user-defined register address using 1 byte increments. An example of this is shown in Figure 4.

Interractions between registers

User-defined registers are stored in memory as a C array, with their order being the same as the order of definition (register address does not affect order). This makes it possible to access data from multiple registers with a single write or read command.

For example, if the registers are defined as shown in Figure 4 a read Frame can be sent with the Address 0x10 requesting 2 bytes of data. The response would contain data from Registers 2 and 3.

SPI reset

The SPI Slave application can be disabled by providing a non-zero value to the the reset input while the simulation is running. This will cause the application to reset and stay in a disabled state until a 0 is detected at the reset input. Resetting the SPI Slave application will clear all active SPI status codes.

SPI status

The SPI status output is used to monitor the SPI status which can help troubleshoot potential errors. Table 3 contains possible error codes and their descriptions. Each error has dedicated bit value(s) that respresent the error code status.

SPI Slave example

This example uses a SCADA Input to set the value of the input register, as well as Probes to read the values of the output registers. The SPI Slave component is configured as shown in the following figures.

The message structure definition is shown in Figure 5.

The registers definition is shown in Figure 6.

Timing diagrams of message frames

The timing diagrams for the specified message structures are as follows:

• Write frame

  

• Read frame with output frame in the same message

  

• Output frame in a new message

  

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Peripheral_Interface