Serial protocols are everywhere in ASIC, SoC, FPGA and embedded systems. Digital Serial interfaces are often preferred to larger bus-type interfaces for chip-to-chip communication because:
- I/O pins cost money - so it is an advantage to reduce pin count for communications between components.
- Board layout can be hard for large buses, especially as bus frequency increases.
- Higher frequencies are common with today’s chip technologies. Higher frequencies compensate reduced pin counts, maintaining total data throughput.
So, there is no surprise that serial protocols similar to SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) are largely used in numerous off-the-shelf and custom digital components (DAC, ADC, flash memories, ASIC, SoC, FPGA).
When testing and debugging your embedded system, you need to get insight of what is going on in the system.
Similarly, you would want to send custom input stimulus, program registers and parameters.
Among existing instruments types, a SPI Host Adapter that supports serial protocols beyond the ’traditional serial peripheral interface’ is an essential asset for your testing and debugging needs through serial ports.