Differences between hardware interrupt and hardware event

[simo zz]

Posted on October 26, 2017 at 18:49

Hello,

I am using an STM32F4 MCU and I have a doubt regarding the hardware event .

The datasheet

http://www.st.com/content/ccc/resource/technical/document/reference_manual/3d/6d/5a/66/b4/99/40/d4/DM00031020.pdf/files/DM00031020.pdf/jcr:content/translations/en.DM00031020.pdf

at section 12.2.3 says

'The STM32F4xx are able to handle external or internal events ... '

It's clear for me the interrupt concept but it's not clear to me what is the difference between an hardware interrupt and and hardware event.

Could you clarify it with a simple example ?

Thank you in advance.

Regards,

Simon

[waclawek.jan · Accepted solution]

Posted on October 26, 2017 at 19:24

The concept of events in the ARMs is related to interprocessor signalling mainly, so in the standalone Cortex-MXs it's relatively meaningless . 

Event input is present in the form of input edge detector (as part of the EXTI module) masked by EXTI_EMR register, and its sole effect is to wake up from WFE-induced sleep.

Event output is present in form of SEV instruction, which outputs a single-cycle pulse on almost all IO pins if set to AF/AF15.

For the most practical purposes you can simply ignore them.

JW