Re-running DMA transfer from ADC to memory on STM32F429 - stm32

I have DMA2 stream 0 configured so that it transfers given number of samples from ADC3 (triggered by TIM2 rising edge) to memory, and after completing the transfer an interrupt happens in which I make calculations on the samples gathered.
Everything is working as intented, except that I would like to be able to repeat the whole process. Transfer should be started by user command (button press, or eventually by command send through USART), therefore I can't use DMA in circular mode for this task.
From what I've found, it is possible to re-run the transfer by modifying some registers and restarting the DMA and ADC, yet I was unable to complete the task. What is the correct set of instructions I have to run to achieve my goal?

Related

Write to NVIC_ICPR on Cortex M0 not clearing pending status for TIM2 interrupt

I'm working with TIM2 on the STM32L068K which is a Cortex M0 processor. When I write to the timer enable bit, all the interrupt flags immediately get set. This in itself is a known issue and apparently endemic to the processor design based on the online commentary I've read.
I can clear out the interrupt flags by writing to the status register, but the problem is that the NVIC pending IRQ bit for this source (#15) is also set. This means that the second I execute cpsie i I get vectored to the ISR for source #15 (confirmed by seeing that this is the reported source in IPSR). I've tried multiple techniques for writing to NVIC_ICPR, but the bit remains set. As one example of many things I've tried, check out this site : https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/pending-interrupt. I've also tried the CMSIS calls to no good effect. Do writes to this register only work in handler mode, not thread mode? And if so, how then can you stop a spurious interrupt from happening? Is it possible to manually enable handler mode without triggering an exception?
Note that this website does say "If the interrupt source generates an interrupt request continuously (level output), then the pending status could remain high even if you try to clear it at the NVIC." I wouldn't expect the TIM2 IRQ to fall into this category as it should only be triggering when the count reaches zero, which is not happening here, and the interrupt flags for it have already been cleared anyway.

Intentional receive complete UART DMA interrupt after specified timeout

I have configured a UART to receive in DMA mode where the size of the buffer is around 64 bytes. So, basically, the HAL_UART_RxCpltCallback() DMA receive complete interrupt will only fire when 64 chars are received.
Is there a way in STM32 through which I can configure a timeout for DMA Rx where when the buffer is only partially filled (i.e. less than 64 chars are received) and we don't receive anymore chars for a specified timeout, the DMA will then raise the same HAL_UART_RxCpltCallback() based interrupt to let the consumer consume whatever partial data is currently received on the UART?
You can use the UART Idle detection interrupt in parallel to the DMA interrupt.
I have used this multiple times with ST32F0xx processors and it is working perfectly.
There Idle detection should be available on F4 and F7 processors too.
There are some tutorials in the internet which target your problem and also provide the solution with the Idle detection.
E.g. check out this one this one.
It's easy but you have to use USART receiver timeout interrupt instead.
in order to get a count of transferred bytes, you can use DMA_CNDTRx or DMA_SxNDTR register (name different for STM family, where x - channel number ).
This register decrements after each DMA transfer. Once the transfer is completed, this register can either stay at zero or be reloaded automatically by the value previously programmed if the channel is configured in autoreload mode.
Unfortunately, STM HAL doesn't provide API, you should implement it yourself.

how does the processor know an instruction is making a system call

system call -- It is an instruction that generates an interrupt that causes OS to gain
control of processor.
so if a running process issue a system call (e.g. create/terminate/read/write etc), a interrupt is generated which cause the KERNEL TO TAKE CONTROL of the processor which then executes the required interrupt handler routine. correct?
then can anyone tell me how the processor known that this instruction is supposed to block the process, go to privileged mode, and bring kernel code.
I mean as a programmer i would just type stream1=system.io.readfile(ABC) or something, which translates to open and read file ABC.
Now what is monitoring the execution of this process, is there a magical power in the cpu to detect this?
As from what i have read a PROCESSOR can only execute only process at a time, so WHERE IS THE MONITOR PROGRAM RUNNING?
How can the KERNEL monitor if a system call is made or not when IT IS NOT IN RUNNING STATE!!
or does the computer have a SYSTEM CALL INSTRUCTION TABLE which it compares with before executing any instruction?
please help
thanku
The kernel doesn't monitor the process to detect a system call. Instead, the process generates an interrupt which transfers control to the kernel, because that's what software-generated interrupts do according to the instruction set reference manual.
For example, on Unix the process stuffs the syscall number in eax and runs an an int 0x80 instruction, which generates interrupt 0x80. The CPU reacts to this by looking in the Interrupt Descriptor Table to find the kernel's handler for that interrupt. This handler is the entry point for system calls.
So, to call _exit(0) (the raw system call, not the glibc exit() function which flushes buffers) in 32-bit x86 Linux:
movl $1, %eax # The system-call number. __NR_exit is 1 for 32-bit
xor %ebx,%ebx # put the arg (exit status) in ebx
int $0x80
Let's analyse each questions you have posed.
Yes, your understanding is correct.
See, if any process/thread wants to get inside kernel there are only two mechanisms, one is by executing TRAP machine instruction and other is through interrupts. Usually interrupts are generated by the hardware, so any other process/threads wants to get into kernel it goes through TRAP. So as usual when TRAP is executed by the process it issues interrupt (mostly software interrupt) to your kernel. Along with trap you will also mentions the system call number, this acts as input to your interrupt handler inside kernel. Based on system call number your kernel finds the system call function inside system call table and it starts to execute that function. Kernel will set the mode bit inside cs register as soon as it starts to handle interrupts to intimate the processor as current instruction is a privileged instruction. By this your processor will comes to know whether the current instruction is privileged or not. Once your system call function finished it's execution your kernel will execute IRET instruction. Which will clear mode bit inside CS register to inform whatever instruction from now inwards are from user mode.
There is no magical power inside processor, switching between user and kernel context makes us to think that processor is a magical thing. It is just a piece of hardware which has the capability to execute tons of instructions at a very high rate.
4..5..6. Answers for all these questions are answered in above cases.
I hope I've answered your questions up to some extent.
The interrupt controller signals the CPU that an interrupt has occurred, passes the interrupt number (since interrupts are assigned priorities to handle simultaneous interrupts) thus the interrupt number to determine wich handler to start. The CPu jumps to the interrupt handler and when the interrupt is done, the program state reloaded and resumes.
[Reference: Silberchatz, Operating System Concepts 8th Edition]
What you're looking for is mode bit. Basically there is a register called cs register. Normally its value is set to 3 (user mode). For privileged instructions, kernel sets its value to 0. Looking at this value, processor knows which kind of instruction it is. If you're interested digging more please refer this excellent article.
Other Ref.
Where is mode bit
Modern hardware supports multiple user sessions. If your hw supports multi user mode, i provides a mechanism called interrupt. An interrupt basically stops the execution of the current code to execute other code (e.g kernel code).
Which code is executed is decided by parameters, that get passed to the interrupt, by the code that issues the interrupt. The hw will increase the run level, load the kernel code into the memory and forces the cpu to execute this code. When the kernel code returns, it again directly informs the hw and the run level gets decreased.
The HW will then restore the cpu state before the interrupt and set the cpu the the next line in the code that started the interrupt. Done.
Since the code is actively calling the hw, which again actively calls the kernel, no monitoring needs to be done by the kernel itself.
Side note:
Try to keep your question short. Make clear what you want. The first answer was correct for the question you posted, you just didnt phrase it well. Make clear that you are new to the topic and need a detailed explanation of basic concepts instead of explaining what you understood so far and don't use caps lock.
Please accept the answer cnicutar provided. thank you.

Interrupt masking: why?

I was reading up on interrupts. It is possible to suspend non-critical interrupts via a special interrupt mask. This is called interrupt masking. What i dont know is when/why you might want to or need to temporarily suspend interrupts? Possibly Semaphores, or programming in a multi-processor environment?
The OS does that when it prepares to run its own "let's orchestrate the world" code.
For example, at some point the OS thread scheduler has control. It prepares the processor registers and everything else that needs to be done before it lets a thread run so that the environment for that process and thread is set up. Then, before letting that thread run, it sets a timer interrupt to be raised after the time it intends to let the thread have on the CPU elapses.
After that time period (quantum) has elapsed, the interrupt is raised and the OS scheduler takes control again. It has to figure out what needs to be done next. To do that, it needs to save the state of the CPU registers so that it knows how to undo the side effects of the code it executes. If another interrupt is raised for any reason (e.g. some async I/O completes) while state is being saved, this would leave the OS in a situation where its world is not in a valid state (in effect, saving the state needs to be an atomic operation).
To avoid being caught in that situation, the OS kernel therefore disables interrupts while any such operations that need to be atomic are performed. After it has done whatever needs doing and the system is in a known state again, it reenables interrupts.
I used to program on an ARM board that had about 10 interrupts that could occur. Each particular program that I wrote was never interested in more than 4 of them. For instance there were 2 timers on the board, but my programs only used 1. I would mask the 2nd timer's interrupt. If I didn't mask that timer, it might have been enabled and continued making interrupts which would slow down my code.
Another example was that I would use the UART receive REGISTER full interrupt and so would never need the UART receive BUFFER full interrupt to occur.
I hope this gives you some insight as to why you might want to disable interrupts.
In addition to answers already given, there's an element of priority to it. There are some interrupts you need or want to be able to respond to as quickly as possible and others you'd like to know about but only when you're not so busy. The most obvious example might be refilling the write buffer on a DVD writer (where, if you don't do so in time, some hardware will simply write the DVD incorrectly) versus processing a new packet from the network. You'd disable the interrupt for the latter upon receiving the interrupt for the former, and keep it disabled for the duration of filling the buffer.
In practise, quite a lot of CPUs have interrupt priority built directly into the hardware. When an interrupt occurs, the disabled flags are set for lesser interrupts and, often, that interrupt at the same time as reading the interrupt vector and jumping to the relevant address. Dictating that receipt of an interrupt also implicitly masks that interrupt until the end of the interrupt handler has the nice side effect of loosening restrictions on interrupting hardware. E.g. you can simply say that signal high triggers the interrupt and leave the external hardware to decide how long it wants to hold the line high for without worrying about inadvertently triggering multiple interrupts.
In many antiquated systems (including the z80 and 6502) there tends to be only two levels of interrupt — maskable and non-maskable, which I think is where the language of enabling or disabling interrupts comes from. But even as far back as the original 68000 you've got eight levels of interrupt and a current priority level in the CPU that dictates which levels of incoming interrupt will actually be allowed to take effect.
Imagine your CPU is in "int3" handler now and at that time "int2" happens and the newly happened "int2" has a lower priority compared with "int3". How would we handle with this situation?
A way is when handling "int3", we are masking out other lower priority interrupters. That is we see the "int2" is signaling to CPU but the CPU would not be interrupted by it. After we finishing handling the "int3", we make a return from "int3" and unmasking the lower priority interrupters.
The place we returned to can be:
Another process(in a preemptive system)
The process that was interrupted by "int3"(in a non-preemptive system or preemptive system)
An int handler that is interrupted by "int3", say int1's handler.
In cases 1 and 2, because we unmasked the lower priority interrupters and "int2" is still signaling the CPU: "hi, there is a something for you to handle immediately", then the CPU would be interrupted again, when it is executing instructions from a process, to handle "int2"
In case 3, if the priority of “int2” is higher than "int1", then the CPU would be interrupted again, when it is executing instructions from "int1"'s handler, to handle "int2".
Otherwise, "int1"'s handler is executed without interrupting (because we are also masking out the interrupters with priority lower then "int1" ) and the CPU would return to a process after handling the “int1” and unmask. At that time "int2" would be handled.

FreeRTOS Sleep Mode hazards while using MSP430f5438

I wrote an an idle hook shown here
void vApplicationIdleHook( void )
{
asm("nop");
P1OUT &= ~0x01;//go to sleep lights off!
LPM3;// LPM Mode - remove to make debug a little easier...
asm("nop");
}
That should cause the LED to turn off, and MSP430 to go to sleep when there is nothing to do. I turn the LED on during some tasks.
I also made sure to modify the sleep mode bit in the SR upon exit of any interrupt that could possibly wake the MCU (with the exception of the scheduler tick isr in portext.s43. The macro in iar is
__bic_SR_register_on_exit(LPM3_bits); // Exit Interrupt as active CPU
However, it seems as though putting the MCU to sleep causes some irregular behavior. The led stays on always, although when i scope it, it will turn off for a couple instructions cycles when ever i wake the mcu via one of the interrupts (UART), and then turn back on.
If I comment out the LPM3 instruction, things go as planned. The led stays off for most of the time and only comes on when a task is running.
I am using a MSP4f305438
Any ideas?
Perhaps the problem is the call __bic_SR_register_on_exit(LPM3_bits). This macro changes the LPM bits in the stacked SR, so it must know where to find the saved SR on the stack. I believe that __bic_SR_register_on_exit() is designed for the standard interrupt stack frame generated by the compiler when you use the __interrupt directive. However, a preemptive RTOS, like FreeRTOS, uses its own stack frame typically bigger than the stack frame generated by the compiler, because an RTOS must store the complete context. In this case __bic_SR_register_on_exit() called from an ISR might not find the SR on the stack. Worse, it probably corrupts some other saved register value on the stack.
For a preemptive kernel I would not call __bic_SR_register_on_exit() from the ISRs. The consequence is that the idle callback is called only once and never again, because every time the RTOS performs a context switch back to the idle task the side effect is restoring the SR with the LPM bits turned on. This causes a sleep mode (which is what you want), but your LED won't get toggled.
Miro Samek
state-machine.com