Intel® MAX® 10 FPGA – AN 485: Serial Peripheral Interface Master Design Example

Intel® MAX® 10 FPGA – AN 485: Serial Peripheral Interface Master Design Example

715016
6/9/2016

Introduction

The serial peripheral interface (SPI) is a widely used, four-wire, serial communication interface.

Design Details

Device Family

Intel® MAX® 10 FPGAs

Quartus Edition

Intel® Quartus® Prime Standard Edition

Quartus Version

16.0

IP Cores (0)

Detailed Description

Applications such as digital audio, digital signal processing, and telecommunication channels require high-speed data streams The low-power, high-speed Intel® MAX® 10 FPGA is perfectly suited for an SPI master, external to the host. This application note details the implementation of the SPI master in an Intel MAX 10 FPGA. A microprocessor is used to control the master, which you can use to select a slave device to read and write data to and from it.


SPI is an industry-standard protocol that is widely used in embedded systems for interfacing microprocessors and various devices such as sensors, memory chips, shift registers, port expanders, display drivers, data converters, printers, data storage devices, sensors, and multimedia cards. This interface standard has several advantages:

  • Low pin count and simple wiring
  • Full-duplex communication for higher throughput (allowing faster communication compared to other protocols such as I2C)
  • No addressing; therefore, reduced overhead.


Prepare the design template in the Quartus Prime software GUI (version 14.1 and later)


Note: After downloading the design example, you must prepare the design template. The file you downloaded is of the form of a <project>.par file which contains a compressed version of your design files (similar to a .qar file) and metadata describing the project. The combination of this information is what constitutes a <project>.par file. In releases 16.0 or newer, you can simply double click on the <project>.par file and Quartus will launch that project.


The second means to bring up the project template is through the New Project Wizard (File -> New Project Wizard). After entering the project name and folder on the first panel, the second panel will ask you to specify an empty project or project template. Select project template. You will see a list of Design Templates projects that you have loaded prior as well as various "Baseline Pinout Designs" that contain the pinout and settings for a variety of development kits. If you don't see your design template in the list, click on the link that states install the Design Templates circled below:



Browse to the <project>.par file you downloaded, click next, followed by Finish, and your design template will be installed and displayed in the Project Navigator pane in Quartus.


Note: When a design is stored in the Design Store as a design template, it has been previously regression tested against the stated version of Quartus software. The regression ensures the design template passes analysis/synthesis/fitting/assembly steps in the Quartus design flow.



Prepare the design template in the Quartus Prime software command-line


At the command-line, type the following command:

quartus_sh --platform_install -package <project directory>/<project>.par


Once the process completes, then type:

quartus_sh --platform -name <project>

Design Details

Device Family

Intel® MAX® 10 FPGAs

Quartus Edition

Intel® Quartus® Prime Standard Edition

Quartus Version

16.0