The \gls{SPI} unit provides access to one of the microcontroller's \gls{SPI} peripherals. The unit can be configured to any of the hardware-supported speeds, clock polarity, and clock phase settings. Explanation of those options, including diagrams, can be found in \cref{sec:theory_spi}.
The unit handles up to 16 slave select (\gls{NSS}) signals and supports message multi-cast (addressing more than one slaves at once). Protection resistors should be used if a multi-cast transaction is issued with \gls{MISO} connected to prevent a short circuit between slaves transmitting the opposite logical level.
The QUERY command of this unit, illustrated by \cref{fig:spi_query}, is flexible enough to support all types of \gls{SPI} transactions: read-only, write-only, and read-write, with different request and response lengths and paddings. The slave select signal is asserted during the entire transaction.