Parallel Communication on the MSP430

Hey Ryan,

Thank for the response!
So if parallel communication is possible, would it be possible to then read 16 bits in at the same time?
I am asking because I have want to interface a msp430 and a FPGA. I want the FPGA to have a 16 bit output which I then
want to connect each bit of the 16 bit output to a pin in the msp430 meaning 16 GPIO pins on the msp430 will act as inputs and I then want to read those 16 bits in simultaneously and store it in a variable. This should be possible correct?

What speeds are you talking about?

There is a reason nothing is parallel anymore, long dead is PATA and parallel Printer ports.

Pretty sure MSP with DMA don't support GPIO as the peripheral, and you would need to find Px 0-15 available pins.

Yes you can read  and write 16bit port, could call it port-banging.

SPI at 8 MHz is (up to 1MHz byte's) is that not fast enough for you?

Why do you need parallel I/O? What data tranfer rates are you looking for?

Note that you need not only data lines, but also clock. Just blind reading of I/O lines will not work - receiver shall know when new data word is set by transmitter on I/O port, thus clock is needed. This immediately complicates things and render parallel I/O not that much faster than serial interface such as SPI.

Hey Wheezy,

Some MSP devices, like those in the F5xx/F6xx family, combine P1 and P2 byte registers into a PA word register, P3 and P4 to PB, etc. so that it is possible to read 16 bits at a single time. The issue is if you need any of these pins for other modules, such as ADC, (e)USCI, timers, etc. which will then interfere with your parallel port. As Tony and Ilmars have mentioned, parallel ports are quite old and have been replaced with more reliable communication interfaces such as SPI.

Regards,
Ryan

Thank you for the responses! I still need to find out exactly at what speeds or transfer rates i want my design to work on but nonetheless at least I learned that the MSP430 can read in an entire byte at the same time reading the PxIN register entirely. Any further questions I'll be sure to post them back. Thanks.