| Author: Rupali Honrao, Microchip Technology Inc. |
Serial interface memories are used in a broad spectrum of consumer, automotive, telecommunication, medical, industrial, and PC related markets. Primarily used to store personal preference data and configuration/setup data, serial memories are the most flexible type of nonvolatile memory (NVM) utilized today. Compared to other NVM solutions, serial memory devices offer lower pin count, smaller packages and lower voltages, as well as lower power consumption.
Most AVR® microcontrollers provide an SPI interface, which enables connection with serial memory devices like EEPROM 25AA256/25LC256 and DataFlash devices like SST25VF010A, SST25VF020, SST25VF040B and SST25VF080B.
To ease and accelerate SPI serial memory integration with AVR devices, basic drivers were developed to provide efficient access. This application note describes the functionality and the architecture of these drivers. This application note also provides driver source code in Atmel | START.