26.2 Overview

The Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) is a high-speed synchronous data transfer interface using three or four pins. It allows full-duplex communication between an AVR® device and peripheral devices or between several microcontrollers. The SPI peripheral can be configured as either host or client. The host initiates and controls all data transactions.

The interconnection between host and client devices with SPI is shown in the block diagram below. The system consists of two shift registers and a server clock generator. The SPI host initiates the communication cycle by pulling the desired client’s Client Select (SS) signal low. The host and client prepare the data to be sent to their respective shift registers, and the host generates the required clock pulses on the SCK line to exchange data. Data are always shifted from host to client on the host output, client input (MOSI) line, and from client to host on the host input, client output (MISO) line.