doc/README.atmel_pmecc

   1 How to enable PMECC(Programmable Multibit ECC) for nand on Atmel SoCs
   2 -----------------------------------------------------------
   3 2012-08-22 Josh Wu <josh.wu@atmel.com>
   4
   5 The Programmable Multibit ECC (PMECC) controller is a programmable binary
   6 BCH(Bose, Chaudhuri and Hocquenghem) encoder and decoder. This controller
   7 can be used to support both SLC and MLC NAND Flash devices. It supports to
   8 generate ECC to correct 2, 4, 8, 12 or 24 bits of error per sector (512 or
   9 1024 bytes) of data.
  10
  11 Following Atmel AT91 products support PMECC.
  12 - AT91SAM9X25, X35, G25, G15, G35 (tested)
  13 - AT91SAM9N12 (not tested, Should work)
  14
  15 As soon as your nand flash software ECC works, you can enable PMECC.
  16
  17 To use PMECC in this driver, the user needs to set:
  18         1. the PMECC correction error bits capability: CONFIG_PMECC_CAP.
  19            It can be 2, 4, 8, 12 or 24.
  20         2. The PMECC sector size: CONFIG_PMECC_SECTOR_SIZE.
  21            It only can be 512 or 1024.
  22
  23 Take AT91SAM9X5EK as an example, the board definition file likes:
  24
  25 /* PMECC & PMERRLOC */
  26 #define CONFIG_ATMEL_NAND_HWECC         1
  27 #define CONFIG_ATMEL_NAND_HW_PMECC      1
  28 #define CONFIG_PMECC_CAP                2
  29 #define CONFIG_PMECC_SECTOR_SIZE        512
  30
  31 How to enable PMECC header for direct programmable boot.bin
  32 -----------------------------------------------------------
  33 2014-05-19 Andreas Bießmann <andreas.devel@googlemail.com>
  34
  35 The usual way to program SPL into NAND flash is to use the SAM-BA Atmel tool.
  36 This however is often not usable when doing field updates. To be able to
  37 program a SPL binary into NAND flash we need to add the PMECC header to the
  38 binary before. Chapter '12.4.4.1 NAND Flash Boot: NAND Flash Detection' in
  39 sama5d3 SoC spec (as of 03. April 2014) defines how this PMECC header has to
  40 look like. In order to do so we have a new image type added to mkimage to
  41 generate this PMECC header and integrated this into the build process of SPL.
  42
  43 To enable the generation of atmel PMECC header for SPL one need to define
  44 CONFIG_SPL_GENERATE_ATMEL_PMECC_HEADER. The required parameters are taken from
  45 board configuration and compiled into the host tools atmel_pmecc_params. This
  46 tool will be called in build process to parametrize mkimage for atmelimage
  47 type. The mkimage tool has intentionally _not_ compiled in those parameters.
  48
  49 The mkimage image type atmelimage also set the 6'th interrupt vector to the
  50 correct value. This feature can also be used to setup a boot.bin for MMC boot.