Lattice Sentry QSPI Monitor IP Core

Resilient SPI/QSPI Security IP for Platform Firmware Resiliency

A Quad-Serial Peripheral Interface (QSPI) is a serial interface wherein four data lines are used to read, write, and erase flash chips. It is faster than the traditional Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) and is specifically designed to communicate with flash chips that support this interface. Unlike the traditional SPI that uses separate data lines for input and output (MISO and MOSI), the QSPI interface configures the data lines on the fly to act as outputs to send some information to the flash memory and act as inputs to read some memory contents.

The Lattice Sentry™ QSPI Monitor is a security module that can monitor SPI or QSPI buses. The design is implemented in Verilog HDL. It can be configured and generated using Lattice Propel™ Builder. It can be targeted to MachXO3D™, CrossLInk™-NX, Certus™-NX, Mach™-NX, and MachXO4™ FPGA devices and implemented using the Lattice Radiant™ software integrated with the Synplify Pro® synthesis tool.

Latest Resource Utilization details are available in the IP Core User Guide.

Features

  • Supports up to five external SPI/QSPI buses to monitor illegal activity
  • Enable/disable dynamically the flash initialization commands per monitor
  • Flash commands (program, read, erase) are monitored based on address ranges
  • Supports up to four dynamically configurable address ranges for filtering per monitor
  • Supports both 24-bit and 32-bit flash addressing modes/commands
Lattice Sentry

Block Diagram

Customer PLD Interface Block Diagram

Ordering Information

  Part Number
Device Family Multi-site Perpetual Single Seat Annual
MachXO3D SENTRY-PFR-XO3D-UT -
Mach-NX SENTRY-PFR-LFMNX-UT -

Device Family Part Number Description
MachXO3D SECURITY-XO3D-SW MachXO3D Encryption Security Block License

Documentation

Quick Reference
Information Resources
TITLE NUMBER VERSION DATE FORMAT SIZE
Select All
QSPI Monitor IP Core - User Guide
FPGA-IPUG-02110 1.3 12/17/2025 PDF 723.9 KB
TITLE NUMBER VERSION DATE FORMAT SIZE
Select All
QSPI Monitor IP Core - Release Notes
FPGA-RN-02087 1.0 12/19/2025 PDF 238.1 KB

*By clicking on the "Notify Me of Changes" button, you agree to receive notifications on changes to the document(s) you selected.