Synchronous Microcontroller Communication Interfaces: SPI and Microwire versus I²C

By Volker Soffel
MicroController Pros Corporation
May 1, 2003

This paper is the first in a series about various microcontroller communication interfaces, their application, features, benefits and disadvantages. You can find about a dozen different communication interfaces integrated in microcontrollers on the market today to tackle almost any conceivable communication task. With this increasing interface variety it becomes more complicated to pick the "right" interface for the task at hand. Each of the available interfaces has its advantages and disadvantages and is better suited at some tasks than others.

In this article series, I will make the attempt to describe in the allotted space the various interface types, highlight their typical uses, summarize the key electrical and physical parameters, and point out the features and benefits of each. My goal is to provide you with some key information in a concise format that hopefully will make your task of selecting interfaces for your next application easier.

Synchronous Interfaces

The types of interfaces available to you can be classified into two basic categories: Synchronous interfaces and asynchronous interfaces. In this article we'll focus on synchronous interfaces.

Synchronous interfaces are characterized by the presence of a dedicated receive/transmit clock signal. A "Master" device usually outputs a clock signal that is received by all "Slave" devices to receive and transmit data in synch. The advantage: Each device works with the transmit/receive clock of the master independent of any oscillator variations of each individual device; so these interfaces are very suitable for use with cheap oscillators that have large frequency variations

Examples of synchronous interfaces are: SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface), developed by Motorola, MICROWIRE developed by National Semiconductor, I²C (Inter Integrated Circuit) developed by Philips/Signetics, and USART (Universal Synchronous & Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter) - as the name suggests a USART can either be used in a synchronous or asynchronous mode, so it falls into both categories.

Synchronous interfaces were designed mainly to connect peripheral devices on the same circuit board, like external EEPROMS, A/D converters, display drivers and sensors to microcontrollers. They are only suitable to bridge relatively short distances (< 1 meter).

Microwire and SPI versus I²C

SPI is a close cousin of the older Microwire. Both interfaces are very simple and basically consist only of an 8-bit serial shift register and (for master devices) a programmable shift clock. There is no means of addressing devices. Typical applications consist of one master device (usually a microcontroller) and one or multiple slave devices (usually peripheral functions, like A/D, EEPROM, display drivers, etc.).

I²C is quite a bit more complex than SPI and Microwire, which results in a larger silicon area and therefore slightly more expensive devices. In addition Philips is collecting licensing fees for I²C implementations from competitors, adding to the cost of I²C devices.

Connecting External Peripherals

There is a minimum of 3 connections for SPI and Microwire: serial clock, serial data out and serial data in. Therefore you'll see those interfaces sometimes referred to as 3-wire interfaces. The interconnected devices need to also share the same Vcc and GND of course and in the case of multiple connected devices you need one chip select for each connected slave device (for just one slave, the slave's chip select can be enabled all the time – not recommended, but possible).

If you want to connect N devices to your microcontroller with Microwire or SPI you need to sacrifice 3+N pins to do the job. This is an area where I²C has an advantage. I²C features a 7-bit address as part of the protocol. As such I²C can address up to 128 devices on the bus without the need for dedicated chip select signals.

The Need For Speed

Microwire and SPI shine when it comes to speed. I²C was initially specified at a maximum speed of 100kbits/sec. This was later increased to 400kbits/sec and lately some devices started to show up that boast 1Mbits/sec. This still pales in comparison to Microwire and SPI speeds. SPI has the edge over Microwire, due to the availability of higher speed peripheral devices. Today's serial EEPROM for example support up to 3MBits/s for Microwire and up to 10Mbits/sec for SPI. But even the slowest Microwire and SPI peripherals still beat the typical 100 or 400kbit/s I²C speeds.

Increasing the speed gap is the fact that SPI and Microwire have full–duplex capability (can receive and send data at the same time), while I²C, due to its two-wire nature (one clock, one data) can only communicate half-duplex.

Why can speed be important? Current consumption for one - many microcontroller applications spend most of their time in power save modes and only short periods of time in "normal" operating mode. The faster a read or write operation to a peripheral can be completed, the shorter the time the controller needs to be active. This is especially true for access to large external EEPROM memories.

Multi-Master Systems

I²C offers better support for multi-master systems. The interface has built in arbitration to detect multiple devices sending on the bus at the same time and to give priority to the one that first sends a "0". Microwire would require some software implemented handshaking via a standard I/O pin to allow for multiple master devices on the bus. SPI has a crude way to support multi-master systems via its built in "fault logic". It can detect requests of devices to become the master via the dedicated SS (slave select) pin.

Noise Immunity

One possible disadvantage of I²C should not go unmentioned: Higher noise sensitivity and along with it lower data integrity. I²C uses a read/write bit which follows the initial 7 address bits to tell a peripheral whether data should be read or written. In addition I²C is level sensitive - in contrast to Microwire and SPI, which are edge sensitive. This means that I²C samples data during the high or low phase of a bit and you can easily envision that noise could flip the read/write bit. So if you wanted to read data from your external EEPROM, but noise turned your read bit into a write bit, your memory might get corrupted. Microwire and SPI peripherals on the other hand implement read and write operations via explicit commands send over the bus, making selecting the "wrong" operation less likely.

So which synchronous interface should you give the preference?

If you have many devices to connect and in addition have multiple microcontrollers in your system that can act as masters, then I²C is the interface of choice. The same holds true if you need to keep the number of interconnects, board routing and pins required for the interface to an absolute minimum. The I²C interface is very popular in video and audio applications, due to Philips' (microcontroller & application specific peripheral) dominance in those applications. If you develop such applications you might not find your desired peripheral function with any other interface.

If your main concerns are low cost, high speed or noise immunity, either Microwire or SPI are preferable. An added advantage is that MICROWIRE/PLUS microcontrollers can talk to SPI peripherals and SPI microcontrollers can talk to Microwire peripherals with minimum additional software overhead, which gives you a large selection of available peripherals to choose from for most applications.

There's still more to cover on Microwire, SPI and I²C, so in next month's article, I'll cover SPI's, Microwire's and I²C's protocol format and electrical specs in some more detail before moving on to the asynchronous interfaces.

About the Author

Volker Soffel is the General Manager of MicroController Pros Corporation (uCPros). uCPros offers services in: Electronic system design with a focus on embedded systems; marketing and management consulting; employee training; technical writing and translations. uCPros also publishes a free monthly Embedded News Digest email newsletter, covering the latest events in the microcontroller industry.

Part 2: SPI, Microwire and I²C Protocol Formats >>

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Synchronous Microcontroller Communication Interfaces: SPI and Microwire versus I2C