MOSI/MISO and 140 Years Of Wrong –
The engineers who developed SPI in the late 1970s had to come up with a shorthand to indicate that one component controlled the data dialogue and gave the orders, while the other took the orders and only responded within a limited set of expected norms. Master/Slave was the engineering norm.
But these words are not appropriate and we at Make: will stop using those terms in our books, magazine, and online articles. Unfortunately, that can’t erase the millions of MOSI/MISO boards already in existence. What do we do about them?
Following what we think will become standard practice, from now on, our default for MOSI/MISO will be to call them “Main Out/Serial In” and “Main In/Serial Out”, a practice already being followed by Adafruit and others. When more information is available about a specific circuit, the initials can become more precise …
…the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) has put forth a proposal to rename “master” and “slave” components to “controller” and “peripheral”. As we wait for COPI/CIPO boards to become the norm, we welcome these changes to nomenclature throughout the electronics industry.
Related:
- Switching default branch of CircuitPython repositories from master to main – June 2021.
- MOSI/MISO and 140 Years Of Wrong – June 2021.
- The Python programming language repository migrates to main on GitHub… May 2021.
- What Is the Best Way to Purge…
- Fight Over Offensive Terms in Computing – April/May 2021.
- The Linux kernel has now adopted inclusive language – JULY 12, 2020.
- Making open source more inclusive by eradicating problematic language @redhat – JUNE 30, 2020.
- A Resolution to Redefine SPI Signal Names – Open Source Hardware Association – JUNE 29, 2020.
- Replacing Terms in Music Technology – JUNE 22, 2020.
- Renaming the default branch – GitHub.
- Replacing “master” reference in git branch names – May 2019.
- “Master” on GitHub – Feb, 2001.
- Black Lives Matter at Adafruit.
Featured image on MAKE by Artur Shamsutdinov from Pixabay.
