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We're developing a system based on the NXP LPCXpresso54628, including 16MB each of SPI Flash and SDRAM. In the MCUXpresso IDE, NXP provides a number of macros (<cr_section_macros.h) which can be used to locate specific functions and data within these regions. As our application is quite large, we have had occasion to make somewhat extensive use of this facility.

NXP also supports the programming of the device through a "drag-and-drop" interface, whereby the LPCXpresso54628 appears as an external USB drive on the PC desktop which can program an image dropped onto the drive into the devlce program store. Unfortunately, this interface does not support images that make use of the SPI Flash (as does our code, as well as the Embedded Wizard environment which places bitmap and font data in these regions). This means that we are faced with writing a bootloader to handle the programming of our device at manufacture and field updates, adding even more to the usage of the base 512k program flash in the LPC54628.

So, our question is: is there any way to locate portions of the runtime EW libraries to the SPI Flash? If possible, it would be of great usefulness to our project; though this might also involve negative impact on the GUI performance and user experience. Any comments or suggestions you may have are greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Donald Swearingen

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Hi Donald,

as far as I know, the "drag-and-drop" programming works on the different devices only for the internal flash of the MCU and not for the connected QSPI flashes (due to the missing external flash loader). So I never used this method. Instead the flash programming is done by using MCUXpresso IDE or command line version.

For all aspects of implementing your own flash loader, let me refer to the AN12563 SPI Flash Programming Algorithms for LPC546xx.

Concerning Embedded Wizard code and resources: In order to store the bitmap pixel data and the font pixel data within the external flash, you can use the Linker Section Definitions for Resources. This is helpful to store the pixel data within the QSPI flash and still use the code from the internal flash. If you prefer to put the code of the GUI application into the external flash, you can do that in the same manner as any other code. Maybe you can keep the Runtime Environment and the Graphics Engine within the internal flash in order to get better graphics performance.

Best regards,

Manfred.

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