M_CAN message RAM initialization AppNote - was: Re: [PATCH V3 3/3] can: m_can: workaround for transmit data less than 4 bytes

[Oliver Hartkopp]

On 06.11.2014 09:09, Dong Aisheng wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 06, 2014 at 08:04:17AM +0100, Oliver Hartkopp wrote:


>> To prevent the M_CAN controller detecting checksum errors when
>> reading potentially uninitialized TX message RAM content to transmit
>> CAN frames the TX message RAM has to be written with (any kind of)
>> initial data.
>>
>
> The key point of the issue is that why M_CAN will read potentially uninitialized
> TX message RAM content which should not happen?
> e.g. for our case of the issue, if we sending a no data frame or a less
> than 4 bytes frame, why m_can will read extra 4 bytes uninitialized/unset
> data which seems not reasonable?
>
>  From IP code logic, it will read full 8 bytes of data no matter how many data
> actually to be transfered which is strange.

Yes.

>
> For sending data over 4 bytes, since the Message RAM content will be filled
> with the real data to be transfered so there's no such issue.

E.g. think about the transfer of a CAN FD frame with 32 byte.
When you only fill up content until 28 byte the last four bytes still remain 
uninitialized.

Did you try this 28 byte use-case with an uninitialized TX message RAM ?

cansend can0 123##1001122334566778899AABBCCDDEEFF001122334566778899AABB

To me it looks too risky when we only initialize the first 8 byte.

>
>> ---
>>
>> Then the code should memset() the entire TX FIFO element - and not
>> only the 8 data bytes we are addressing now.
>>
>
> Our IC guy told me the issue only happened on transferring a data size
> of less than 4 bytes and my test also proved that.

'less than'?

So you might try to use 26 bytes too:

cansend can0 123##1001122334566778899AABBCCDDEEFF001122334566778899


> So i'm not sure memset() the entire TX FIFO element is neccesary...

It's no big deal - so we should be defensive here.
And memset() is not working as Marc pointed out in another mail.

So we would need to loop with

	m_can_fifo_write(priv, 0, M_CAN_FIFO_DATA(i), 0x0);

>
> Do you think we could keep the current solution firstly and updated later
> if needed?

No :-)

I would like to have all data bytes to be written at startup.

Regards,
Oliver