1 Overview of Linux kernel SPI support
2 ====================================
8 The "Serial Peripheral Interface" (SPI) is a synchronous four wire serial
9 link used to connect microcontrollers to sensors, memory, and peripherals.
10 It's a simple "de facto" standard, not complicated enough to acquire a
11 standardization body. SPI uses a master/slave configuration.
13 The three signal wires hold a clock (SCK, often on the order of 10 MHz),
14 and parallel data lines with "Master Out, Slave In" (MOSI) or "Master In,
15 Slave Out" (MISO) signals. (Other names are also used.) There are four
16 clocking modes through which data is exchanged; mode-0 and mode-3 are most
17 commonly used. Each clock cycle shifts data out and data in; the clock
18 doesn't cycle except when there is a data bit to shift. Not all data bits
19 are used though; not every protocol uses those full duplex capabilities.
21 SPI masters use a fourth "chip select" line to activate a given SPI slave
22 device, so those three signal wires may be connected to several chips
23 in parallel. All SPI slaves support chipselects; they are usually active
24 low signals, labeled nCSx for slave 'x' (e.g. nCS0). Some devices have
25 other signals, often including an interrupt to the master.
27 Unlike serial busses like USB or SMBus, even low level protocols for
28 SPI slave functions are usually not interoperable between vendors
29 (except for commodities like SPI memory chips).
31 - SPI may be used for request/response style device protocols, as with
32 touchscreen sensors and memory chips.
34 - It may also be used to stream data in either direction (half duplex),
35 or both of them at the same time (full duplex).
37 - Some devices may use eight bit words. Others may different word
38 lengths, such as streams of 12-bit or 20-bit digital samples.
40 - Words are usually sent with their most significant bit (MSB) first,
41 but sometimes the least significant bit (LSB) goes first instead.
43 - Sometimes SPI is used to daisy-chain devices, like shift registers.
45 In the same way, SPI slaves will only rarely support any kind of automatic
46 discovery/enumeration protocol. The tree of slave devices accessible from
47 a given SPI master will normally be set up manually, with configuration
50 SPI is only one of the names used by such four-wire protocols, and
51 most controllers have no problem handling "MicroWire" (think of it as
52 half-duplex SPI, for request/response protocols), SSP ("Synchronous
53 Serial Protocol"), PSP ("Programmable Serial Protocol"), and other
56 Some chips eliminate a signal line by combining MOSI and MISO, and
57 limiting themselves to half-duplex at the hardware level. In fact
58 some SPI chips have this signal mode as a strapping option. These
59 can be accessed using the same programming interface as SPI, but of
60 course they won't handle full duplex transfers. You may find such
61 chips described as using "three wire" signaling: SCK, data, nCSx.
62 (That data line is sometimes called MOMI or SISO.)
64 Microcontrollers often support both master and slave sides of the SPI
65 protocol. This document (and Linux) currently only supports the master
66 side of SPI interactions.
69 Who uses it? On what kinds of systems?
70 ---------------------------------------
71 Linux developers using SPI are probably writing device drivers for embedded
72 systems boards. SPI is used to control external chips, and it is also a
73 protocol supported by every MMC or SD memory card. (The older "DataFlash"
74 cards, predating MMC cards but using the same connectors and card shape,
75 support only SPI.) Some PC hardware uses SPI flash for BIOS code.
77 SPI slave chips range from digital/analog converters used for analog
78 sensors and codecs, to memory, to peripherals like USB controllers
79 or Ethernet adapters; and more.
81 Most systems using SPI will integrate a few devices on a mainboard.
82 Some provide SPI links on expansion connectors; in cases where no
83 dedicated SPI controller exists, GPIO pins can be used to create a
84 low speed "bitbanging" adapter. Very few systems will "hotplug" an SPI
85 controller; the reasons to use SPI focus on low cost and simple operation,
86 and if dynamic reconfiguration is important, USB will often be a more
87 appropriate low-pincount peripheral bus.
89 Many microcontrollers that can run Linux integrate one or more I/O
90 interfaces with SPI modes. Given SPI support, they could use MMC or SD
91 cards without needing a special purpose MMC/SD/SDIO controller.
94 I'm confused. What are these four SPI "clock modes"?
95 -----------------------------------------------------
96 It's easy to be confused here, and the vendor documentation you'll
97 find isn't necessarily helpful. The four modes combine two mode bits:
99 - CPOL indicates the initial clock polarity. CPOL=0 means the
100 clock starts low, so the first (leading) edge is rising, and
101 the second (trailing) edge is falling. CPOL=1 means the clock
102 starts high, so the first (leading) edge is falling.
104 - CPHA indicates the clock phase used to sample data; CPHA=0 says
105 sample on the leading edge, CPHA=1 means the trailing edge.
107 Since the signal needs to stablize before it's sampled, CPHA=0
108 implies that its data is written half a clock before the first
109 clock edge. The chipselect may have made it become available.
111 Chip specs won't always say "uses SPI mode X" in as many words,
112 but their timing diagrams will make the CPOL and CPHA modes clear.
114 In the SPI mode number, CPOL is the high order bit and CPHA is the
115 low order bit. So when a chip's timing diagram shows the clock
116 starting low (CPOL=0) and data stabilized for sampling during the
117 trailing clock edge (CPHA=1), that's SPI mode 1.
119 Note that the clock mode is relevant as soon as the chipselect goes
120 active. So the master must set the clock to inactive before selecting
121 a slave, and the slave can tell the chosen polarity by sampling the
122 clock level when its select line goes active. That's why many devices
123 support for example both modes 0 and 3: they don't care about polarity,
124 and alway clock data in/out on rising clock edges.
127 How do these driver programming interfaces work?
128 ------------------------------------------------
129 The <linux/spi/spi.h> header file includes kerneldoc, as does the
130 main source code, and you should certainly read that chapter of the
131 kernel API document. This is just an overview, so you get the big
132 picture before those details.
134 SPI requests always go into I/O queues. Requests for a given SPI device
135 are always executed in FIFO order, and complete asynchronously through
136 completion callbacks. There are also some simple synchronous wrappers
137 for those calls, including ones for common transaction types like writing
138 a command and then reading its response.
140 There are two types of SPI driver, here called:
142 Controller drivers ... controllers may be built in to System-On-Chip
143 processors, and often support both Master and Slave roles.
144 These drivers touch hardware registers and may use DMA.
145 Or they can be PIO bitbangers, needing just GPIO pins.
147 Protocol drivers ... these pass messages through the controller
148 driver to communicate with a Slave or Master device on the
149 other side of an SPI link.
151 So for example one protocol driver might talk to the MTD layer to export
152 data to filesystems stored on SPI flash like DataFlash; and others might
153 control audio interfaces, present touchscreen sensors as input interfaces,
154 or monitor temperature and voltage levels during industrial processing.
155 And those might all be sharing the same controller driver.
157 A "struct spi_device" encapsulates the master-side interface between
158 those two types of driver. At this writing, Linux has no slave side
159 programming interface.
161 There is a minimal core of SPI programming interfaces, focussing on
162 using the driver model to connect controller and protocol drivers using
163 device tables provided by board specific initialization code. SPI
164 shows up in sysfs in several locations:
166 /sys/devices/.../CTLR ... physical node for a given SPI controller
168 /sys/devices/.../CTLR/spiB.C ... spi_device on bus "B",
169 chipselect C, accessed through CTLR.
171 /sys/bus/spi/devices/spiB.C ... symlink to that physical
172 .../CTLR/spiB.C device
174 /sys/devices/.../CTLR/spiB.C/modalias ... identifies the driver
175 that should be used with this device (for hotplug/coldplug)
177 /sys/bus/spi/drivers/D ... driver for one or more spi*.* devices
179 /sys/class/spi_master/spiB ... symlink (or actual device node) to
180 a logical node which could hold class related state for the
181 controller managing bus "B". All spiB.* devices share one
182 physical SPI bus segment, with SCLK, MOSI, and MISO.
184 Note that the actual location of the controller's class state depends
185 on whether you enabled CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED or not. At this time,
186 the only class-specific state is the bus number ("B" in "spiB"), so
187 those /sys/class entries are only useful to quickly identify busses.
190 How does board-specific init code declare SPI devices?
191 ------------------------------------------------------
192 Linux needs several kinds of information to properly configure SPI devices.
193 That information is normally provided by board-specific code, even for
194 chips that do support some of automated discovery/enumeration.
198 The first kind of information is a list of what SPI controllers exist.
199 For System-on-Chip (SOC) based boards, these will usually be platform
200 devices, and the controller may need some platform_data in order to
201 operate properly. The "struct platform_device" will include resources
202 like the physical address of the controller's first register and its IRQ.
204 Platforms will often abstract the "register SPI controller" operation,
205 maybe coupling it with code to initialize pin configurations, so that
206 the arch/.../mach-*/board-*.c files for several boards can all share the
207 same basic controller setup code. This is because most SOCs have several
208 SPI-capable controllers, and only the ones actually usable on a given
209 board should normally be set up and registered.
211 So for example arch/.../mach-*/board-*.c files might have code like:
213 #include <mach/spi.h> /* for mysoc_spi_data */
215 /* if your mach-* infrastructure doesn't support kernels that can
216 * run on multiple boards, pdata wouldn't benefit from "__init".
218 static struct mysoc_spi_data __initdata pdata = { ... };
220 static __init board_init(void)
223 /* this board only uses SPI controller #2 */
224 mysoc_register_spi(2, &pdata);
228 And SOC-specific utility code might look something like:
230 #include <mach/spi.h>
232 static struct platform_device spi2 = { ... };
234 void mysoc_register_spi(unsigned n, struct mysoc_spi_data *pdata)
236 struct mysoc_spi_data *pdata2;
238 pdata2 = kmalloc(sizeof *pdata2, GFP_KERNEL);
242 spi2->dev.platform_data = pdata2;
243 register_platform_device(&spi2);
245 /* also: set up pin modes so the spi2 signals are
246 * visible on the relevant pins ... bootloaders on
247 * production boards may already have done this, but
248 * developer boards will often need Linux to do it.
254 Notice how the platform_data for boards may be different, even if the
255 same SOC controller is used. For example, on one board SPI might use
256 an external clock, where another derives the SPI clock from current
257 settings of some master clock.
260 DECLARE SLAVE DEVICES
262 The second kind of information is a list of what SPI slave devices exist
263 on the target board, often with some board-specific data needed for the
264 driver to work correctly.
266 Normally your arch/.../mach-*/board-*.c files would provide a small table
267 listing the SPI devices on each board. (This would typically be only a
268 small handful.) That might look like:
270 static struct ads7846_platform_data ads_info = {
271 .vref_delay_usecs = 100,
276 static struct spi_board_info spi_board_info[] __initdata = {
278 .modalias = "ads7846",
279 .platform_data = &ads_info,
282 .max_speed_hz = 120000 /* max sample rate at 3V */ * 16,
288 Again, notice how board-specific information is provided; each chip may need
289 several types. This example shows generic constraints like the fastest SPI
290 clock to allow (a function of board voltage in this case) or how an IRQ pin
291 is wired, plus chip-specific constraints like an important delay that's
292 changed by the capacitance at one pin.
294 (There's also "controller_data", information that may be useful to the
295 controller driver. An example would be peripheral-specific DMA tuning
296 data or chipselect callbacks. This is stored in spi_device later.)
298 The board_info should provide enough information to let the system work
299 without the chip's driver being loaded. The most troublesome aspect of
300 that is likely the SPI_CS_HIGH bit in the spi_device.mode field, since
301 sharing a bus with a device that interprets chipselect "backwards" is
302 not possible until the infrastructure knows how to deselect it.
304 Then your board initialization code would register that table with the SPI
305 infrastructure, so that it's available later when the SPI master controller
306 driver is registered:
308 spi_register_board_info(spi_board_info, ARRAY_SIZE(spi_board_info));
310 Like with other static board-specific setup, you won't unregister those.
312 The widely used "card" style computers bundle memory, cpu, and little else
313 onto a card that's maybe just thirty square centimeters. On such systems,
314 your arch/.../mach-.../board-*.c file would primarily provide information
315 about the devices on the mainboard into which such a card is plugged. That
316 certainly includes SPI devices hooked up through the card connectors!
319 NON-STATIC CONFIGURATIONS
321 Developer boards often play by different rules than product boards, and one
322 example is the potential need to hotplug SPI devices and/or controllers.
324 For those cases you might need to use spi_busnum_to_master() to look
325 up the spi bus master, and will likely need spi_new_device() to provide the
326 board info based on the board that was hotplugged. Of course, you'd later
327 call at least spi_unregister_device() when that board is removed.
329 When Linux includes support for MMC/SD/SDIO/DataFlash cards through SPI, those
330 configurations will also be dynamic. Fortunately, such devices all support
331 basic device identification probes, so they should hotplug normally.
334 How do I write an "SPI Protocol Driver"?
335 ----------------------------------------
336 Most SPI drivers are currently kernel drivers, but there's also support
337 for userspace drivers. Here we talk only about kernel drivers.
339 SPI protocol drivers somewhat resemble platform device drivers:
341 static struct spi_driver CHIP_driver = {
344 .owner = THIS_MODULE,
348 .remove = __devexit_p(CHIP_remove),
349 .suspend = CHIP_suspend,
350 .resume = CHIP_resume,
353 The driver core will automatically attempt to bind this driver to any SPI
354 device whose board_info gave a modalias of "CHIP". Your probe() code
355 might look like this unless you're creating a device which is managing
356 a bus (appearing under /sys/class/spi_master).
358 static int __devinit CHIP_probe(struct spi_device *spi)
361 struct CHIP_platform_data *pdata;
363 /* assuming the driver requires board-specific data: */
364 pdata = &spi->dev.platform_data;
368 /* get memory for driver's per-chip state */
369 chip = kzalloc(sizeof *chip, GFP_KERNEL);
372 spi_set_drvdata(spi, chip);
378 As soon as it enters probe(), the driver may issue I/O requests to
379 the SPI device using "struct spi_message". When remove() returns,
380 or after probe() fails, the driver guarantees that it won't submit
381 any more such messages.
383 - An spi_message is a sequence of protocol operations, executed
384 as one atomic sequence. SPI driver controls include:
386 + when bidirectional reads and writes start ... by how its
387 sequence of spi_transfer requests is arranged;
389 + which I/O buffers are used ... each spi_transfer wraps a
390 buffer for each transfer direction, supporting full duplex
391 (two pointers, maybe the same one in both cases) and half
392 duplex (one pointer is NULL) transfers;
394 + optionally defining short delays after transfers ... using
395 the spi_transfer.delay_usecs setting (this delay can be the
396 only protocol effect, if the buffer length is zero);
398 + whether the chipselect becomes inactive after a transfer and
399 any delay ... by using the spi_transfer.cs_change flag;
401 + hinting whether the next message is likely to go to this same
402 device ... using the spi_transfer.cs_change flag on the last
403 transfer in that atomic group, and potentially saving costs
404 for chip deselect and select operations.
406 - Follow standard kernel rules, and provide DMA-safe buffers in
407 your messages. That way controller drivers using DMA aren't forced
408 to make extra copies unless the hardware requires it (e.g. working
409 around hardware errata that force the use of bounce buffering).
411 If standard dma_map_single() handling of these buffers is inappropriate,
412 you can use spi_message.is_dma_mapped to tell the controller driver
413 that you've already provided the relevant DMA addresses.
415 - The basic I/O primitive is spi_async(). Async requests may be
416 issued in any context (irq handler, task, etc) and completion
417 is reported using a callback provided with the message.
418 After any detected error, the chip is deselected and processing
419 of that spi_message is aborted.
421 - There are also synchronous wrappers like spi_sync(), and wrappers
422 like spi_read(), spi_write(), and spi_write_then_read(). These
423 may be issued only in contexts that may sleep, and they're all
424 clean (and small, and "optional") layers over spi_async().
426 - The spi_write_then_read() call, and convenience wrappers around
427 it, should only be used with small amounts of data where the
428 cost of an extra copy may be ignored. It's designed to support
429 common RPC-style requests, such as writing an eight bit command
430 and reading a sixteen bit response -- spi_w8r16() being one its
431 wrappers, doing exactly that.
433 Some drivers may need to modify spi_device characteristics like the
434 transfer mode, wordsize, or clock rate. This is done with spi_setup(),
435 which would normally be called from probe() before the first I/O is
436 done to the device. However, that can also be called at any time
437 that no message is pending for that device.
439 While "spi_device" would be the bottom boundary of the driver, the
440 upper boundaries might include sysfs (especially for sensor readings),
441 the input layer, ALSA, networking, MTD, the character device framework,
442 or other Linux subsystems.
444 Note that there are two types of memory your driver must manage as part
445 of interacting with SPI devices.
447 - I/O buffers use the usual Linux rules, and must be DMA-safe.
448 You'd normally allocate them from the heap or free page pool.
449 Don't use the stack, or anything that's declared "static".
451 - The spi_message and spi_transfer metadata used to glue those
452 I/O buffers into a group of protocol transactions. These can
453 be allocated anywhere it's convenient, including as part of
454 other allocate-once driver data structures. Zero-init these.
456 If you like, spi_message_alloc() and spi_message_free() convenience
457 routines are available to allocate and zero-initialize an spi_message
458 with several transfers.
461 How do I write an "SPI Master Controller Driver"?
462 -------------------------------------------------
463 An SPI controller will probably be registered on the platform_bus; write
464 a driver to bind to the device, whichever bus is involved.
466 The main task of this type of driver is to provide an "spi_master".
467 Use spi_alloc_master() to allocate the master, and spi_master_get_devdata()
468 to get the driver-private data allocated for that device.
470 struct spi_master *master;
471 struct CONTROLLER *c;
473 master = spi_alloc_master(dev, sizeof *c);
477 c = spi_master_get_devdata(master);
479 The driver will initialize the fields of that spi_master, including the
480 bus number (maybe the same as the platform device ID) and three methods
481 used to interact with the SPI core and SPI protocol drivers. It will
482 also initialize its own internal state. (See below about bus numbering
485 After you initialize the spi_master, then use spi_register_master() to
486 publish it to the rest of the system. At that time, device nodes for
487 the controller and any predeclared spi devices will be made available,
488 and the driver model core will take care of binding them to drivers.
490 If you need to remove your SPI controller driver, spi_unregister_master()
491 will reverse the effect of spi_register_master().
496 Bus numbering is important, since that's how Linux identifies a given
497 SPI bus (shared SCK, MOSI, MISO). Valid bus numbers start at zero. On
498 SOC systems, the bus numbers should match the numbers defined by the chip
499 manufacturer. For example, hardware controller SPI2 would be bus number 2,
500 and spi_board_info for devices connected to it would use that number.
502 If you don't have such hardware-assigned bus number, and for some reason
503 you can't just assign them, then provide a negative bus number. That will
504 then be replaced by a dynamically assigned number. You'd then need to treat
505 this as a non-static configuration (see above).
510 master->setup(struct spi_device *spi)
511 This sets up the device clock rate, SPI mode, and word sizes.
512 Drivers may change the defaults provided by board_info, and then
513 call spi_setup(spi) to invoke this routine. It may sleep.
515 Unless each SPI slave has its own configuration registers, don't
516 change them right away ... otherwise drivers could corrupt I/O
517 that's in progress for other SPI devices.
519 ** BUG ALERT: for some reason the first version of
520 ** many spi_master drivers seems to get this wrong.
521 ** When you code setup(), ASSUME that the controller
522 ** is actively processing transfers for another device.
524 master->transfer(struct spi_device *spi, struct spi_message *message)
525 This must not sleep. Its responsibility is arrange that the
526 transfer happens and its complete() callback is issued. The two
527 will normally happen later, after other transfers complete, and
528 if the controller is idle it will need to be kickstarted.
530 master->cleanup(struct spi_device *spi)
531 Your controller driver may use spi_device.controller_state to hold
532 state it dynamically associates with that device. If you do that,
533 be sure to provide the cleanup() method to free that state.
538 The bulk of the driver will be managing the I/O queue fed by transfer().
540 That queue could be purely conceptual. For example, a driver used only
541 for low-frequency sensor access might be fine using synchronous PIO.
543 But the queue will probably be very real, using message->queue, PIO,
544 often DMA (especially if the root filesystem is in SPI flash), and
545 execution contexts like IRQ handlers, tasklets, or workqueues (such
546 as keventd). Your driver can be as fancy, or as simple, as you need.
547 Such a transfer() method would normally just add the message to a
548 queue, and then start some asynchronous transfer engine (unless it's
554 Contributors to Linux-SPI discussions include (in alphabetical order,