16.1 Overview

The Universal Synchronous and Asynchronous serial Receiver and Transmitter (USART) can be set to a master SPI compliant mode of operation.

Setting both UMSELn[1:0] bits to one enables the USART in MSPIM logic. In this mode of operation the SPI master control logic takes direct control over the USART resources. These resources include the transmitter and receiver shift register and buffers, and the baud rate generator. The parity generator and checker, the data and clock recovery logic, and the RX and TX control logic is disabled. The USART RX and TX control logic is replaced by a common SPI transfer control logic. However, the pin control logic and interrupt generation logic is identical in both modes of operation.

The I/O register locations are the same in both modes. However, some of the functionality of the control registers changes when using MSPIM.