How much flash memory is there in the microcontroller? - stm32

I have an STM32F303CBT6 microcontroller.
On the ST site, the volume of the flush is 128 kB.
In reference manual flash up 256 kB.
In this case, register "Flash memory size data register" contains the value 128 [kB].
There is also 128 kb in the stlink utility.
But in the cleaning window, the page costs 128 pages of 2 kB. This amounts to 256 KB.
I didn't get it. What is the size of the flash?

The "B" in STM32F303CBT6 stands for "128KB" (see STM32 Part Number Decoding).
The 256KB version would be STM32F303CCT6.
I can't tell you what the cleaning window indicates.

Related

If the system supports 64bit word then how many words can be stored in the RAM? Also how many bits will be required to address each Word uniquely?

a) Suppose there is a RAM of size 4GB installed in an intel Core i5 computer. If the system supports 64bit word then how many words can be stored in the RAM? Also how many bits will be required to address each Word uniquely?
There are a lot of variables to this question. How big are the words? How much RAM does Microsoft let Word use before it starts swapping data in a pagefile? Is any compression used?
If we assume that Word has access to all 4GB of RAM (the OS, and Word aren't using any in this situation), that there is no pagefile to dump to, and no compression going on in the background, we can do some simple math to find out. We know that typically a single ascii character takes up 1 byte of memory, and that there are 1024 bytes in a KB, 1024 KB in a MB, and so on. So, we just multiply until we get to 4GB worth of bytes. 1024 Bytes X 1024 KB X 1024 MB X 4 GB = 4,294,967,296 ascii characters.
Coincidentally, that's the maximum number of possible 32-bit addresses in 32bit systems, and why 32bit systems were unable to support more than 4GB of RAM without Physical Address Extension (PAE). With so little RAM, it doesn't matter that the program is 64bit, it just means it can handle addressing and integers larger than that if the RAM is available.
I hope that helps you in some way! I'm kind of concerned that you are having to worry about the maximum number of words that can be stored in 4GB.

STM32F746ZG - How to update some part of 256 KB sector in flash

I'm using STM32F103 and moving my code to STM32F746. The F103 was able to update Flash on a per-page basis in 1KB and 2KB.
I have STM32F746ZG Nucleo-board and my code size is big, flash took up to 0x08038000. I want to save other small applications on 0x08040000(sector_5). This applications consist of several 2KB sizes. I need to store multiple applications in Sector_5 and M7 cannot use Flash in 1KB or 2KB increments.
The followings are sector sizes of STM32F746ZG.
#define ADDR_FLASH_SECTOR_0 ((uint32_t)0x08000000) // 32 Kbytes
#define ADDR_FLASH_SECTOR_1 ((uint32_t)0x08008000) // 32 Kbytes
#define ADDR_FLASH_SECTOR_2 ((uint32_t)0x08010000) // 32 Kbytes
#define ADDR_FLASH_SECTOR_3 ((uint32_t)0x08018000) // 32 Kbytes
#define ADDR_FLASH_SECTOR_4 ((uint32_t)0x08020000) // 128 Kbytes
#define ADDR_FLASH_SECTOR_5 ((uint32_t)0x08040000) // 256 Kbytes
#define ADDR_FLASH_SECTOR_6 ((uint32_t)0x08080000) // 256 Kbytes
#define ADDR_FLASH_SECTOR_7 ((uint32_t)0x080C0000) // 256 Kbytes
STM32F746 consists of flash in a sector size of 256 KB each from Sector_5 to Sector7. If I want to use the Sector_5, I have to erase the whole of one sector. What if I want to update only about 2KB in the front of the Sector_5 and keep the area after 2KB intact? It means I only update the content from 0x08040000 to 0x08042000. I have to keep from 0x08042001 to 0x0807FFFF.
I can't even copy 256 KB of Flash to RAM. Because F746 only have 240KB of internal RAM and my many tasks already used RAM, so there is not enough RAM to copy one sector. In this case, please let me know how to update part of 256KB in flash.
On the ST's flash technology, there is no way to update anywhere in the sector without first erasing it. So if there are content in the first 2KB, you cannot update it without erasing the rest of the sector.
One possibility is that you can keep one sector as a temporary buffer and never use it for real storage. Let's say you use sector 7 for that. So when you want to update sector 5, erase sector 7, copy sector 5 into sector 7, and then erase sector 5 and copy relevant content back.
Another possibility is to add an external EEPROM or SRAM for this purpose. SPI flash EEPROM is fairly inexpensive and they have a typical 100,000 write cycles, so also perfect for this use.
That depends. On many STM32 microcontrollers you can zero the bits of the FLASH without erasing it. But you cant set the bits of course - it can only be done by the erase operation. Some chips do not allow it as the flash sector has its own CRC.
If your chip allows the writing to the 0xff filled FLASH you can store the data in another place of this sector. If not You need to copy data to another sector, arase the sector and the write the data back.

Virtual Memory page table growth

When processes are allowed to grow larger than memory, page tables also grow very large. How could we organize page tables and TLB to keep access times as quick as possible for codes with good locality? For example, assume physical memory is 512K, each page is 1K, and a TLB of size 128. If we assume most processes are 256K or less, then we could allocate a fixed-size page table with 256 entries. Now in the unexpected case, where the page table grows larger than 256 entries, how should we organize it? What implications does your design have on average access time and on the maximum virtual memory size of a program?
The solution used on x86 is to have "sparse" page tables, that is there isn't a full table to contain a mapping for each page. Rather a two level mechanism is used:
The virtual memory is 4 GB large. A single page has size 4 KB. Using a one level approach would thus require a table of 4 GB / 4 KB = 1024 * 1024 entries. If an entry consumed 4 bytes, then every process would need 4 MB just to store its table.
Using a two level approach we have a page directory with 1024 entries, each of size 4 bytes (making it fit perfectly into a single 4 KB page). Thus each entry in that directory manages 4 GB / 1024 = 4 MB. If (and only if) there should be a mapping of some pages of virtual memory to physical memory in that 4 MB range, then the entry points to an instance of another structure, a page table. That contains 1024 entries, too, so each one manages 4 MB / 1024 = 4 KB exactly one page.
If there's a process that just needs a single page to operate, then using the single level approach we need 4 MB to store its virtual memory configuration. Using the two level mechanism described above, we need 4 KB for the page directory and 4 KB for the page table containing the mapping for that single page. Thus only 8 KB are used to store the virtual memory configuration.
If the process needs additional memory at runtime, and if that memory is at a (virtual) address not within the 4 MB range managed by its page table, then a second page table needs to be provided, increasing the memory used to store the mappings by another 4 KB.
Using this two level approach slightly increases access times for pages not in the TLB, because the memory management unit needs to access two memory locations (the page directory, and afterwards the respective page table) to be able to compute the physical address.
The TLB is unaffected by this: It stores mappings of single pages. How these mappings have been established isn't relevant to its operation.
Let's apply this to the example configuration you gave above:
A singe page has 1 KB size. Most processes, as you said, will have 256 KB or less memory. But we want to be able to have processes using more virtual memory.
If we choose to have the last level handle a full 256 KB, then we have
256 KB / 1 KB = 256 entries. Assuming a 32 bit architecture, this in turn means we can have each entry with size of 4 byte (to hold an address). 256 entries * 4 Byte = 1 KB and thus a full page. Nice.
To be able to handle more virtual memory than 256 KB we add another layer. Because it's easy, we let this level use tables with 256 entries (a 4 byte), too, to make such a table exactly fit into a page.
This gives us a virtual memory of 256 * 256 KB (roughly 65 MB). An virtual address in that system would then be 26 bit long:
DDDDDDDDTTTTTTTTPPPPPPPPPP
D := Index to page directory, highest level.
8 bit to be able to index 256 entries.
T := Index to page table, lower level.
8 bit to be able to index 256 entries.
P := Offset inside page.
10 bit to be able to address 1024 bytes.
A process using less than 256 KB needs then 2 KB to manage its memory configuration. Each additional 256 KB of virtual memory needed add another 1 KB of configuration memory.
Assuming the TLB can hold 128 entries (your question is a bit unclear here) it would need 128 * (16 + X - 10) bit, where X is the number of bits used to address physical memory. (Though this depends on the actual implemenation. I was thinking about16 bit per entry to store the indices of the paging structures + the upper bits of the physical address, not counting the 10 bits offset)
I hope this answers your question. An actual implementation will need to make design choices based on a lot of constraints.

Out of memory on a rather small matrix

I am doing motion detection on a fairly small video. 56 frames of 288x384xRGB. I keep two copies of it, so it should amount to about 40 Mb tops, including my other variables.
Now, this line gives me an out of memory error
output = uint8(zeros(this.videoHeight,2.*this.videoWidth,3,size(this.originalFrames,4)));
typing memory reports
>> memory
Maximum possible array: 202 MB (2.114e+08 bytes) *
Memory available for all arrays: 863 MB (9.045e+08 bytes) **
Memory used by MATLAB: 527 MB (5.526e+08 bytes)
Physical Memory (RAM): 3071 MB (3.220e+09 bytes)
* Limited by contiguous virtual address space available.
** Limited by virtual address space available.
>>
I'm new to MATLAB, but not totally new to programming. What am i not understanding?
EDIT
So i did som disp'ing:
disp(this.videoHeight)
disp(2.*this.videoWidth)
disp(size(this.originalFrames,4))
produces:
288
768
54
So, it is actually smaller than i suggested...
You should use
zeros(..., 'uint8')
rather than
uint8(zeros(...))
to avoid creating the array in double-precision first, and then copying it to a uint8 array.
I haven't looked in detail but I would be surprised if there weren't quite a bit of overhead imposed by Matlab. You're probably using a lot more memory than you might suspect.
Try dialing down the number of frames you process to see if that fixes the problem.

Matlab - out of memory while calling mex-file in the midde of program

I am asking this question because I failed to solve it myself and hope someone can give me any suggestion.
My problem is:
my program includes 3 parts:
part-1: video encoder,
part-2: channel coding - also call to a mex-files: complie from C-function "encodeBits.c" to Matlab-mexfile "encodeBits.mexw32",
part-3: video decoder.
I also perform 4 checks:
check 1: part-1 + part-2 as a whole. it means without channel coding, program works well.
check 2: pseudo an input to part-2, it means part-2 stays alone. part-2 works well.
part-2 still works well even under this condition:
possible array: **632** MB (6.623e+08 bytes) *
Memory available for all arrays: **1054** MB (1.105e+09 bytes) **
Memory used by MATLAB: 653 MB (6.842e+08 bytes)
Physical Memory (RAM): 2795 MB (2.930e+09 bytes)
check 3: part-1 + part-2 + part-3 as a whole.
memory before part 1 runs:
Maximum possible array: 877 MB (9.199e+08 bytes) *
Memory available for all arrays: 1265 MB (1.326e+09 bytes) **
Memory used by MATLAB: 441 MB (4.628e+08 bytes)
Physical Memory (RAM): 2795 MB (2.930e+09 bytes)
memory before part-2 runs, means after part-1 finished:
Maximum possible array: **869** MB (9.107e+08 bytes) *
Memory available for all arrays: **1270** MB (1.332e+09 bytes) **
Memory used by MATLAB: 430 MB (4.511e+08 bytes)
Physical Memory (RAM): 2795 MB (2.930e+09 bytes)
and it results error right after part-2 starting with error
Error using encodeBits
Out of memory. Type HELP MEMORY for your options.
check 4: tried part-2 alone again after clear all variable from check 3
it still results error
Error using encodeBits
Out of memory. Type HELP MEMORY for your options.
check 5: close Matlab window, open Matlab window and run part-2 alone
it works well.
So, I cannot understand why it happens, I tried to search hard but I still cannot solve it.
Judging by your check under load failing at/after the mex call, and using clear all not fixing it, it sounds like you have a memory leak in your mex code. If the mexFunction allocates memory and doesn't clear it matlab is unable to clear the space, and so it will remain allocated until you shut matlab.