Hardware Protocols
Chips are built from many blocks that must exchange data over agreed interfaces. This path covers the protocols every RTL and SoC engineer is expected to know: the VALID/READY handshake, the AMBA on-chip buses APB, AHB, and AXI, and the serial interfaces SPI, I2C, and UART, with clear comparisons of when each is used.
8 modulesIntermediateAMBAAXISPI / I2C / UART
1
Why Chips Need Protocols
How blocks and chips agree on how to talk
6 minFree
2
The VALID/READY Handshake
The one idea behind every modern on-chip bus
8 minFree
3
APB: The Simple Peripheral Bus
The easy AMBA bus for slow peripherals
8 minFree
4
AHB: The Pipelined Bus
Address and data overlap for higher throughput
8 minFree
5
AXI: The High-Performance Interface
Five independent channels for maximum throughput
11 minFree
6
SPI: Fast Four-Wire Serial
Simple, full-duplex, master-driven clock
7 minFree
7
I2C: Two-Wire Addressable Bus
Two wires, many devices, built-in acknowledge
8 minFree
8
UART: Clockless Asynchronous Serial
No clock wire, agreed baud rate, simple framing
8 minFree