The Quad Serial Peripheral Interface (QSPI) is a synchronous serial data link that provides communication with external devices in Master mode.
The QSPI can be used in SPI Master Mode to interface to serial peripherals, such as ADCs, DACs, LCD controllers, CAN controllers and sensors, or in Serial Memory mode to interface to serial Flash memories.
The QSPI allows the system to execute code directly from a serial Flash memory (XIP) without code shadowing to RAM. The serial Flash memory mapping is seen in the system as other memories, such as ROM, SRAM, DRAM, embedded Flash memory, and so on.
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.