{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,10]],"date-time":"2026-09-10T23:17:03Z","timestamp":1789082223918,"version":"build-2803163510"},"reference-count":22,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"10","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2024,10,10]],"date-time":"2024-10-10T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1728518400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["62201325"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["62201325"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["2023KJ096"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2023KJ096"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["ZR2020QF027"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["ZR2020QF027"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Science and Technology Support Plan for Youth Innovation of Colleges and Universities in Shandong Province of China","award":["62201325"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["62201325"]}]},{"name":"Science and Technology Support Plan for Youth Innovation of Colleges and Universities in Shandong Province of China","award":["2023KJ096"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2023KJ096"]}]},{"name":"Science and Technology Support Plan for Youth Innovation of Colleges and Universities in Shandong Province of China","award":["ZR2020QF027"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["ZR2020QF027"]}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100007129","name":"Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["62201325"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["62201325"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100007129","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100007129","name":"Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["2023KJ096"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2023KJ096"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100007129","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100007129","name":"Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["ZR2020QF027"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["ZR2020QF027"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100007129","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Micromachines"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The utilization of SPI-Flash in embedded systems is widespread, primarily serving as program storage during the boot process. As a result, the boot process is influenced to some extent by the SPI-Flash controller. This paper presents a lightweight SPI-Flash controller that simplifies the boot process design by establishing a direct connection between the SPI-Flash and AHB-lite bus interface, enabling rapid program execution in RAM instead of directly from the SPI-Flash. Additionally, the controller can function as a bare-metal program downloader for testing the boot process functionality during FPGA-based SoC (system-on-chip) prototype verification. The system-level simulation and FPGA verification results demonstrate that the proposed SPI-Flash controller successfully achieves its intended functional impact in operations to target the Micron N25Q256A SPI-Flash chip, boot process design, and bare-metal program download. The synthesis results under the SMIC 180 nm 1P8M technology process indicate that this SPI-Flash controller exhibits remarkable performance, power consumption, and area utilization. The source code of the proposed lightweight SPI-Flash controller has been uploaded to GitHub as an open-source project.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/mi15101246","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,10,10]],"date-time":"2024-10-10T07:54:09Z","timestamp":1728546849000},"page":"1246","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["A Lightweight SPI-Flash Controller Based on AMBA AHB-Lite Bus"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"15","author":[{"given":"Bingzheng","family":"Li","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Electronic and Information Engineering, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266590, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4964-917X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Weike","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Electronic and Information Engineering, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266590, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Hanbing","family":"Chu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Electronic and Information Engineering, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266590, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Zixuan","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Electronic and Information Engineering, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266590, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Wei","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Electronic and Information Engineering, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266590, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,10,10]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Harshitha, K., Rithik Raj, G., and Santhosh, G.H. (2024, January 26\u201327). Microarchitecture Design and Verification of NAND Flash Memory Controller using System Verilog. Proceedings of the 2024 Asia Pacific Conference on Innovation in Technology (APCIT), Mysore, India."},{"key":"ref_2","unstructured":"(2024, March 25). HBirdv2 E203. Available online: https:\/\/github.com\/riscv-mcu\/e203_hbirdv2."},{"key":"ref_3","unstructured":"(2024, March 22). E906-SmartRun-Platform. Available online: https:\/\/github.com\/XUANTIE-RV\/opene906."},{"key":"ref_4","unstructured":"(2024, March 25). Zqh_riscv. Available online: https:\/\/github.com\/zhouqinghua\/zqh_riscv."},{"key":"ref_5","unstructured":"(2024, March 25). Yuheng. Available online: https:\/\/gitee.com\/dengchow\/yuheng-riscv-soc.git."},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Shaila, C.K., Manoj, G., Divya, P.S., and Vijila, M. (2023, January 23\u201324). Functional Verification of SPI Protocol using UVM based on AMBA Architecture for Flash Memory Applications. Proceedings of the 2023 4th International Conference on Signal Processing and Communication (ICSPC), Coimbatore, India.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICSPC57692.2023.10125890"},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Qiang, P., Cao, J., and Zhang, X. (November, January 29). A novel NAND SPI-Flash memory controller compatible with asynchronous and source synchronous data types. Proceedings of the 2012 IEEE 11th International Conference on Solid-State and Integrated Circuit Technology, Xi\u2019an, China.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICSICT.2012.6467796"},{"key":"ref_8","first-page":"39","article-title":"A QSPI Flash controller with multi-mode support","volume":"46","author":"Wang","year":"2022","journal-title":"Inf. Technol."},{"key":"ref_9","unstructured":"Wang, X.H., and Huang, Z.M. (2013, January 15\u201317). Design and implementation of high speed QSPI memory controller. 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