STM32F429 and Erase Sector time

[SKokk.1]

Hello,

MCU: STM32F429ZI

I am building a bootloader for my project to upgrade the application firmware from SD card.

Everything works fine but the total time for a ~2MBytes .bin file is almost 45 seconds. So, i am trying to check each step and try to reduce its time.

• Sector Erase Time

Sectors erasing takes up to 25 seconds, is there a way to reduce it? I am using the below function:

EraseStruct.NbSectors = (uint32_t)(NbOfSectors);   
if(HAL_FLASHEx_Erase(&EraseStruct, &SectorError) != HAL_OK) {
.
.
}

•   Flash Writing Time

Writing to Flash (+ time to read from file) takes about 20 seconds. Is there a way to write more than doubleword to reduce the time?

if (HAL_FLASH_Program(FLASH_TYPEPROGRAM_DOUBLEWORD, Address, FileData) == HAL_OK) {
.
.
.
}

 Thank you.

[Tesla DeLorean]

Pretty sure the Data Sheet lists expected write/erase times

2 seconds per 128KB sector erase as I recall

[TDK · Accepted solution]

Can't do anything about the erase time.

You can improve write time by writing your own driver for it. It's not very complicated. HAL does a lot of extra stuff and calling one function per byte isn't efficient. I imagine this would speed things up quite a bit.

Programming double words has a voltage requirement of 7-9V which you probably don't satisfy.

[SKokk.1]

It's single WORD, my bad.

if (HAL_FLASH_Program(FLASH_TYPEPROGRAM_WORD, Address, FileData) == HAL_OK) {
	if(*(uint32_t*)Address != FileData) {
				 /* De-initialization of SD-FileSystem */
				 SimpleSD_DeInit();
				 /* Locks the FLASH control register access. */
				 HAL_FLASH_Lock();
				 /* Flash Data Compare error */
			     return SIMPLESD_FLASH_WRITE_COMPARE_ERROR;
	 }
	Address += sizeof(FileData);
}

[SKokk.1]

You can improve write time by writing your own driver for it. It's not very complicated. HAL does a lot of extra stuff and calling one function per byte isn't efficient. I imagine this would speed things up quite a bit.

I will try it, thank you.