37.1 Overview

The Quad SPI Interface (QSPI) circuit is a synchronous serial data link that provides communication with external devices in Host mode.

The QSPI can be used in “SPI mode” to interface serial peripherals, such as ADCs, DACs, LCD controllers and sensors, or in “Serial Memory Mode” to interface serial Flash memories.

The QSPI allows the system to execute code directly from a serial Flash memory (XIP) without code shadowing to SRAM. The serial Flash memory mapping is seen in the system as other memories (ROM, SRAM, DRAM, embedded Flash memories, etc.,).

With the support of the quad-SPI protocol, the QSPI allows the system to use high performance serial Flash memories which are small and inexpensive, in place of larger and more expensive parallel Flash memories.