Serial peripheral interface and related methods

A serial communication device comprising:

• at least one data bus and an address bus;
• a processor coupled to said at least one data bus and said address bus;
• and
• a serial peripheral interface coupled to said processor and comprising
• a memory coupled to said at least one data bus and said address bus, said memory for storing data from the at least one data bus associated with a plurality of peripheral devices based upon respective data addresses on the address bus, said memory having a respective transmit data section and a respective receive data section for each peripheral device and also having a configuration command section for storing configuration commands for use in communicating with each of the peripheral devices,
• a data pointer for pointing to transmit and receive data section addresses,
• a control register for controlling said data pointer based upon at least one configuration command associated with a selected peripheral device,
• a data transfer circuit for serially transferring data between said memory and the selected peripheral device based upon the at least one configuration command, and
• a configuration pointer for pointing to an address at which the at least one configuration command is stored in the configuration command section based upon a data address on the at least one data bus.

A serial data transfer method comprising:

• coupling a memory to at least one data bus and an address bus, the at least one data bus also being coupled to a plurality of peripheral devices, the memory having a respective transmit data section and a respective receive data section for each peripheral device and also having a configuration command section for storing configuration commands for use in communicating with each of the peripheral devices;
• storing the configuration commands in the configuration command section;
• determining an address at which at least one configuration command for a selected peripheral device is stored in the configuration command section based upon a data address on the at least one data bus;
• and
• serially transferring data between the memory and the selected peripheral device based upon the at least one configuration command.