nRF5340: DFU over BLE + External Flash + boot the image from external flash

Hello,

Are there any steps or documentation specific to nRF5340 to perform DFU over BLE and store the image into external flash and on the next boot it should get executed from External flash only? Is there any ready example which does the same?

I tried https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/1.9.0/nrf/ug_nrf5340.html#fota-upgrades and also tried the steps mentioned for nRF52840 but did not work. And not able to find the exact steps for nRF5340.

Also, I want to know whether it is possible that I can store both primary and secondary images in external flash only and Internal flash only used for MCUBoot?

Thank you.

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0 user14926 over 4 years ago
Hi,

MCUBoot have support for direct-xip image slots. The image needs to be built for the memory location where it will be execute from, ARM Cortex M CPUs does not support position independent code. By default, the bootloader will load the image from second slot into primary slot before execution.

In nRF Connect SDK v2.0.0 released today, there is added support for dual slot execute in place (XIP) in the build system, see the MCUboot section in nRF Connect SDK v2.0.0 Release Notes for more details:

Added support for the Dual-slot execute-in-place (XIP) feature in the nRF Connect SDK build system. See the ncs/nrf/tests/modules/mcuboot/direct_xip test project for an example of how to leverage this feature in your application.

Note that this test sample will place both slots in internal flash. You need to combine it with XIP over QSPI to be able to execute code from external flash. See for instance this post.

Best regards,
Jørgen
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0 user14926 over 4 years ago
Hi,

MCUBoot have support for direct-xip image slots. The image needs to be built for the memory location where it will be execute from, ARM Cortex M CPUs does not support position independent code. By default, the bootloader will load the image from second slot into primary slot before execution.

In nRF Connect SDK v2.0.0 released today, there is added support for dual slot execute in place (XIP) in the build system, see the MCUboot section in nRF Connect SDK v2.0.0 Release Notes for more details:

Added support for the Dual-slot execute-in-place (XIP) feature in the nRF Connect SDK build system. See the ncs/nrf/tests/modules/mcuboot/direct_xip test project for an example of how to leverage this feature in your application.

Note that this test sample will place both slots in internal flash. You need to combine it with XIP over QSPI to be able to execute code from external flash. See for instance this post.

Best regards,
Jørgen
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0 user114903 over 4 years ago in reply to user14926

Thank you, Jorgen for providing these additional details. I will update the SDK and will get back to you.
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