Using the QFAC with SDKv6.1.0

[Sebastian Claici]

Hi!

I have an application that was originally developed for the QFAA using the S310 softdevice (v1.0). During subsequent development, we ran out of RAM memory, so we got a few QFACs.

According to the compatibility matrix, version 6.1.0 of the SDK should support IC revision 3. I tried using the same code, and modifying the linker to access the extra 16KB of RAM.

SEARCH_DIR(.)
GROUP(-lgcc -lc -lnosys)

MEMORY
{
  FLASH (rx) : ORIGIN = 0x00020000, LENGTH = 0x20000 
  RAM (rwx) :  ORIGIN = 0x20002400, LENGTH = 0x5C00
  NRF_UICR_GIT_VERSION (rwx) : ORIGIN = 0x10001080, LENGTH = 0x10
  NRF_UICR_APPLICATION_SETTINGS (rwx) : ORIGIN = 0x10001090, LENGTH = 0x70
}

SECTIONS
{
  .NRF_UICR_GIT_VERSION_BLOCK 0x10001080 :
  {
    KEEP(*(.uicrGitVersion))
  } > NRF_UICR_GIT_VERSION

  .NRF_UICR_APPLICATION_SETTINGS_BLOCK 0x10001090 :
  {
    KEEP(*(.uicrApplicationSettings))
  } > NRF_UICR_APPLICATION_SETTINGS
}

INCLUDE "gcc_nrf51_common.ld"

Here I changed the length of the RAM from 0x1C00 to 0x5C00. This compiled fine, but when I flashed it onto the board, none of the functionality worked.

Can anyone help me figure out how to access the extra memory, or confirm that this won't work with the version of the SDK I am using.

On a separate note, would moving to softdevice S110 (since I only use the bluetooth capabilities) mitigate the memory problems?

Thank you.

[RK]

Can you expand on 'none of the functionality worked'? Does a debugger tell you what happened? Some of the older softdevices had a memory check in them and failed on the v3 chips, I don't know if the V1.0 version of S310 has that issue or not.

If you're not using ANT then S310 is a bit of a waste. Can't say if it will fix your memory issues to move to something else, but V1 S310 has somewhat higher RAM usage than many of the others, there's only 1K or so between that and S110 however, 4k if you move to the latest S132.

If you're on rev 3 chips it might be time to move to one of the more-recent softdevices, S130/S132 is where development is going to go, you can even still use the old 6.1 SDK with it if you compile against the proper headers and make a few changes to softdevice calls.