At 11:40 AM 4/27/2005 -0400, you wrote:
>Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
>>And it's especially a lot simpler to implement in hardware. That's
>>probably the reason why SPI chips usually are cheaper than I2C, at
>>least where the additional I2C logic is not negligible compared to the
>>chip complexity.
>
>Or what about license issues.  I know Phillips owns IIC, but is a license
>required for SPI?  I don't remember any such restriction, but I could easily
>be wrong about that.

No, no licence/license for SPI. It was developed by Motorola. But
there are many variations of SPI, which is a downside.

SPI EEPROM chips have historically been significantly more expensive than
I2C parts, probably because of higher usage. The SPI parts are also faster
to access and  thus can command a bit of a premium. I don't think a few
hundred gates matter that much these days, even on a 35-cent part.

Best regards,

Spehro Pefhany --"it's the network..."            "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com




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