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  • Case ID: 335350
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nrfjprog --readqspi unreliable

Torsten Robitzki

Hello,

I have a custom hardware, with an external 128MB QSPI flash memory connected to a nRF5340. My current task at hand, is to store firmware update images for MCUBoot there. The firmware is stored by the application using a custom driver for the external flash memory.

I've used nrfjprog already, to read measurement data from that external flash memory and that worked quite well. That's why it toke me quite some time to realize, that nrfjprog is doing something stupid here.

The external flash memory has a page size of 4kB and when reading the flash memory content, every first byte of every empty page reads 0x0f instead of 0xff. I changed the operations to be used to a single data line (read_mode = "FASTREAD"; write_mode = "PP") and slowed down the QSPI clock frequency to M2. Attaching a logic analyser, shows, that the flash memory response with 0xff (not 0x0f) to page read request.

Before opening this request, I updated the Segger JLink software to the newest version and then, the next try to read the flash content, showed the correct results! I did an other test and used `

west build --pristine -b"nrf5340dk/nrf5340/cpuapp" --build-dir ./build --sysbuild  .` && `west flash --recover ` to install new firmware on the nRF53. A following read, using nrfjprog showed again, wrong results (0x0f at the begin of every page), while the logic analyser still shows the correct picture.

I power reset, both custom hardware and debugger (J-Trace Pro) but that didn't fixed the issue. Combined with my observation from this ticket (https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/f/nordic-q-a/115570/using-mcuboot-with-nrf5340), that sometimes build errors are not reproducible, my suspicion is, that the `west build` or `west flash` command is changing some configuration data outside of the build folder.

I've used ´nrfjprog` a few month ago and could not find any issues. What changed to the project, was an update to nRF Connect SDK v2.7.99-cs2.

nrfjprog version: 10.24.2 external

JLinkARM.dll version: 8.10d

Here, a screen shot of the QSPI trace:


% nrfjprog --readqspi recording.bin --qspiini ./config.toml 
[ #################### ]   0.000s | Reading external memory, 0x200000 bytes @ 0x00000000 - Done                        
Storing data in 'recording.bin'.
% hexdump -C recording.bin | head                           
00000000  0f ff ff ff ff ff ff ff  ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff  |................|
00000010  ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff  ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff  |................|

Attached is the entire trace and the used configuration file.

Best regards

Torsten

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  • 0

    Hello,

    According to the nRF5340's QSPI documentation, only the dedicated QSPI pins should be used for QSPI:

    https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/ps_nrf5340/page/qspi.html#ariaid-title2

    So it could be that what you are seeing is a result of this. 

    Is it too late to change the GPIOs?

    Best regards,

    Edvin

  • 0 in reply to Torsten Robitzki
    Torsten Robitzki said:

    Originally, I used read_mode = "READ4O", write_mode = "PP4IO" and frequency = "M16" in the toml file. That resulted (read by nrfjprog) in reading 0x88, 0x88 as the very first two bytes of every page begin of an empty flash memory.

    This sounds very similar to this ticket:
    Problem with QSPI S25FL064L flash memory and 0xEB command

    The solution there was some configuration that is written to the external flash's configuration registers. Perhaps it says somewhere here, but I can't find the name of the external flash chip, and hence, I don't know what datasheet to look for. 

    Can you please specify the flash chip model? And you can try the fix in the ticket in the link if it happens to be the same one, or if you see that it has a different number of dummy bits, other than what we use. 

    Best regards,

    Edvin

  • 0 in reply to Edvin

    Hi Edwin,

    I tried to boil it down, to an easier to debug problem, by switching to 1 data bit. But ok, I did the same measurements with 4 data bits. The device in question, is the MT25QU01GBBB, a 128MB NOR flash. To address the entire chip, 32 bit addressing is required.

    The expected content of the flash memory is:

    00000000 3d b8 f3 96 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 d0 59 0a 00 |=............Y..|
    00000010 04 00 00 00 00 01 2a 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |......*.........|
    00000020 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff |................|

    Reading 0xEE, 0xAD, 0x7A, 0x49 from the 4 data lines (see screen shot) on the first 8 (data) clocks would be
    - 0b1110`1110,
    - 0b1010`1101,
    - 0b0100`1001 and
    - 0b0111`1010.

    Expected:
    - 0b0011`1101,
    - 0b1011`1000,
    - 0b1111`0011,
    - 0b1001`0110

    which seems to fit the expectation. If I compare the trace with Figure 134 (32-bit READ4O; SPIMODE = MODE0) of v1.3.1 of the nRF5340 data sheet, they seem to match exatly.

    Now, when reading the flash memory content, with `nrfjprog`:

    % nrfjprog --readqspi recording.bin --qspiini ./config.toml
    % hexdump -C recording.bin | head

    00000000 88 88 3d b8 f3 96 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 d0 59 |..=............Y|
    00000010 0a 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 2a 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |........*.......|

    Wild guess: When I look at figure 135 of the same data sheet, there are just 6 dummy bits. If the peripheral would be configured to expect only 6 dummy bits, and D3 beeing high during the 7th and 8th dummy bit, clocked out by the flash memory, the peripheral would read 0x88, 0x88 during the first 4 clocks cycles.

    All in all, the problem seems to boil down, to the peripheral starting to read in data 4 clock cycles too early (or expecting 4 dummy bits less, than the memory is sending).

    Again, two oberservations / data points, I would like to stress once more:

    • nrfjprog worked for use, before we switched to nRF Connect SDK v2.7.99-cs2.
    • nrfjprog worked exactly once, after I've update the JLink software

    A few more data points:

    • Our application uses a custom driver, that accesses the QSPI peripheral directly. That driver does not has that problem.
    • We use MCUBoot and MCUBoot uses the `official` nordic driver and this combination also shows no problem.

    With all that data points, I really suspect that there is some kind of additional configuration, that `nrfprog` is reading / processing and that this additional configuration, somehow is added / created / introduced by the new `sysbuild` feature.

    best regards

    Torsten

    P.S.: I've just discovered an other "intersting" data point: When I shrink down the size of the configured size of the memory (mem_size = 0x80 in the toml file), the actual access on the QSPI bus takes just a fraction of a second (as expected). However, nrfjprog runs nearly 20s. The reason, why it takes that long, is that nrfjprog writes 3840MB to disk:

    % rm recording.txt
    % ls -la recording.bin
    ls: recording.bin: No such file or directory
    % time nrfjprog --readqspi recording.bin --qspiini ./config.toml
    [ #################### ] 0.000s | Reading external memory, 0x0080 bytes @ 0x00000000 - Done
    Storing data in 'recording.bin'.
    nrfjprog --readqspi recording.bin --qspiini ./config.toml 19,26s user 2,86s system 98% cpu 22,383 total
    % ls -la recording.bin
    -rw-r--r-- 1 todi staff 4026531840 7 Nov 16:29 recording.bin
    % hexdump -C recording.bin
    00000000 88 88 3d b8 f3 96 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 d0 59 |..=............Y|
    00000010 0a 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 2a 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |........*.......|
    00000020 00 00 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff |................|
    00000030 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff |................|
    *
    f0000000

    Edit: it's MB, not GB

  • 0 in reply to Torsten Robitzki

    Hello,

    Looking at the datasheet:
    https://www.datasheet4u.com/datasheet-pdf/Micron/MT25QU01GBBB/pdf.php?id=1225539

    Page 25:

    Can you please try to set this to 4 (0b0100), and see if that changes the behavior? Since this is non-volatile, it should be sufficient to do this only once. 

    Best regards,

    Edvin

  • 0 in reply to Edvin

    The configuration changes nothing in regard to the 4 data bit access. Changing the configuration back to a single data line (FASTREAD), the chip reduces the number of dummy bits to 4 bits and thus obeyed to expectation of nrfjprog. However, nrfjprog still writes 0xF0000000 bytes to disk.

    (I had to use the volatile configuration register; the none volatile showed no effect, even after reseting the chip even though, reading back the register content showed the correct result.)

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  • 0 in reply to Edvin

    The configuration changes nothing in regard to the 4 data bit access. Changing the configuration back to a single data line (FASTREAD), the chip reduces the number of dummy bits to 4 bits and thus obeyed to expectation of nrfjprog. However, nrfjprog still writes 0xF0000000 bytes to disk.

    (I had to use the volatile configuration register; the none volatile showed no effect, even after reseting the chip even though, reading back the register content showed the correct result.)

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