NB2DSK01 SPI System Overview

The NB2DSK01 SPI system involves a variety of SPI-compatible slave resources, located across the hardware system – on the NB2DSK01 motherboard itself and also on certain peripheral boards that plug in to the motherboard. These SPI resources are accessible by three distinct SPI masters:

• Altium Designer (via the USB or parallel port connection)

• The firmware – more specifically a TSK3000A processor therein – loaded onto the motherboard's Spartan-3 FPGA device (the NanoTalk Controller)

• The design loaded onto the currently plugged-in daughter board FPGA device.

Providing the required SPI bus arbitration between the masters, and access to the SPI devices, is the NB2DSK01's SPI Controller. The Controller, which is part of the NanoBoard firmware, plays the role of multiplexer/router – determining which master has access to the SPI bus and which SPI slave device is selected for communications.

Figure 1 illustrates the SPI communications system in-place for the NB2DSK01.

Figure 1. SPI communications on the NB2DSK01.