hardware error when stepping through program

[wim]

I am trying to debug communication over SPI to some peripheral to the NRF51822. I am using the soft device and the bluetooth capabilities, and start the bluetooth stack and afterwards the initialization of the SPI peripheral.

Now, when I add a breakpoint in the code, I get to the breakpoint correctly, but if I then want to step further in the code, I always end up in the disassembly code of the hard fault handler.

Not sure why that is.

Is there some timing critical thing in the soft device which can cause this hard_fault?

I am actually trying to debug the power usage. In this context I was also wondering: if I use the SPI interface, do I need to disable it again before going into sleep mode, to make sure that the high frequency clock is not staying on?

[John]

The soft device does not work well in conjunction with breakpoints in the debugger. Its real time nature causes problems when hitting breakpoints and single stepping code. There is a much better explanation here: Link