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NVIC changing interrupt priority

Hello Nordic

I am running into a problem where I am trying to change the interrupt priority of the the RADIO_IRQ using a proprietary radio protocol on the nRF51 rev3. I am not using a softdevice from Nordic and I am not using BLE for this application.

I have a situation where I need the radio IRQ to run on priority 0 and later on I want it on priority 2. This works fine most of the time but on a rare occasion the priority is somehow not changed to 2 from 0. In my code this ends op resulting in a hardfault because a SVC is used on priority 0.

From the ARM Information Center Application Note 321 I found the following:

"On ARMv6-M processors, you should only change the priority level of an interrupt when the interrupt is disabled, otherwise the result is unpredictable."

"On Cortex-M0 and Cortex-M0+ processors, dynamic changing of priority on enabled interrupts or exceptions is not supported."

"For the Cortex-M0 and the Cortex-M0+ processors, the interrupt should be disabled at the NVIC when changing priority level. The BASEPRI register is not available in these two processors."

What I understand from this is that the interrupt priority may only be changed when the IRQ is disabled. So I disable the RADIO_IRQ before changing the priority and enabling the IRQ again. This didn't prevent the code from failing. So tried entering __DSB() instructions around the priority changing. This also didn't prevent the code from failing.

/* set NVIC */
NVIC_DisableIRQ( RADIO_IRQn );
/* make sure IRQ is disabled */
__DSB();
NVIC_SetPriority( RADIO_IRQn, 2 );
/* make sure priority is changed */
__DSB();
NVIC_EnableIRQ( RADIO_IRQn );

Now I am starting to wonder if I misinterpreted the ARM application note and that the IRQ should not be changed once enabled at all.

Now my question is if Nordic has any experience with changing the priority interrupt of a IRQ and if its possible how it should be done.

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