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 master or slave. The master initiates and controls all data transactions.

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