Current consumption increase when using SPI on lower power domain

RE: Current consumption increase when using SPI on lower power domain

Edvin — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 13:38:24 GMT

Ok. I got to test this now. What I see is that SPIM22 is better than SPIM00 when using pins on P1. This is because the SPIM22 belongs to the peripherall domain (power domain), while the SPIM00 belongs to the high speed domain. The peripheral domain also "owns" the pins on P1.

So:

P1: Belongs to peripheral domain
SPIM22: belongs to peripheral domain
SPIM00: Belongs to high speed domain.

Whenever a peripheral on one domain uses pins on a port that belongs to a different domain, both of the domains needs to be powered. In addition, the pins needs to be forwarded to this other domain, which also draws a bit more current.

You can read a bit about the power domains here:

https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/ps_nrf54L15/page/overview.html#ariaid-title2

Best regards,

Edvin

RE: Current consumption increase when using SPI on lower power domain

Edvin — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 14:07:13 GMT

Hello,

Thank you. I understand. I will try to look into this tomorrow. If you have an application that can reproduce the issue on your board, it would be great if you could upload it here, so that I can test it on my desk tomorrow. It can be a strip down version of the application. Just something that I can use for testing, to see if I can see the similar behavior.

Hopefully, I don't need an actual SPI device attached, but I can see if I can find some sort of SPI device in the office.

Best regards,

Edvin

RE: Current consumption increase when using SPI on lower power domain

wgeeurickx — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 14:28:33 GMT

Hi Edvin,

I currently don't have a devkit on hand of the sensor, so I may not be able to 100% recreate it, but I'll see if I can try with a devkit with another sensor.

I'm using P1.04 for SCK, P1.05 MOSI, P1.06 MISO and P1.07 CS

RE: Current consumption increase when using SPI on lower power domain

Edvin — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 09:19:56 GMT

I see.

Are you able to replicate the same behavior on a DK using the same GPIOs that you are using on your PCBs?

What GPIOs, exactly, are you using?

Best regards,

Edvin

RE: Current consumption increase when using SPI on lower power domain

wgeeurickx — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 12:37:15 GMT

Hi Edvin,

I confirmed with my scope that both are running at the specified 4MHz.

RE: Current consumption increase when using SPI on lower power domain

Edvin — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:11:15 GMT

Hello,

Are both of the SPIs running at the same speed?

My guess is that the SPI00 is using a higher speed/frequency than SPI22. The spikes do look a bit thinner. If this is the case, then the reason is probably that the SPI00 is using a higher SPI frequency, and hence it uses less time to actually do the transfers, and in total uses less current (more sleep for the CPU and less time toggling SPI GPIOs).

Best regards,

Edvin