Test inserts event into the TimerEvent object which is scheduled 50 ms in the future. Then test thread hangs on the semaphore for 51 ms and after that time we expect that event handler has been executed. This test fails sometimes on NRF51_DK, NRF52_DK since different clocks are used for event handling and delay. TimerEvent class uses fast us ticker and semaphores are based on lp ticker (NRF51_DK) or System Tick Timer (NRF52_DK).
We assume that ticker measurement error is 10% and our 1 [ms] extra corresponds to 2% error. I suggest to increase delay to 2 [ms] (4%). This should be enough for all boards at this moment.
It is possible that the difference between base and next tick count on some platforms is greater than 1, in this case we need to repeat counting with the reduced number of cycles (for slower boards).
If number of cycles has been reduced than base tick count needs to be redefined. This operation is missing and is added by this patch.
- Disable microsecond ticker interrupt on reinitialization
- Skip us_ticker_set_interrupt() if timestamp is already past
- Eliminate tmr2Config since tmrConfig is adequate for all timer config
1. Enable LPTICKER for K22, K24, K64, K66, K82, KL82F, KW24D
2. Change the implementation to only use the LPTMR which reduces
the amount of interrupts generated which is required for tickless
operation
Signed-off-by: Mahesh Mahadevan <mahesh.mahadevan@nxp.com>
It has been noticed on NRF51_DK board that occurrence of system tick have impact on test execution.
NRF51_DK is a slow board with fast us ticker and handling of system tick interrupt takes about 250 us ticker ticks which have huge influence on interrupt tests where interrupt is set to <current count> + 100, 200, 500 ticks.
This test fails sometimes while testing 1 ms timeout on NRF51_DK board.
This board is very slow and lp ticker is inaccurate.
I noticed that measured results are very close to the tolerance value. For 1ms delay we measure in failure case 1560 us and tolerance is set to 550.
Since measurement method is also significantly flawed (extra time for setting up ticker and execution of a ticker irq handler) I recommend to increase tolerance by least +100 us for now.
Since now us ticker is disabled in deep-sleep mode and tests-mbed_drivers-timerevent verifies TimerEvent class which uses us ticker then deep-sleep mode needs to be disabled during the test execution.
On some boards without SYSTICK support lp ticker is used to trace system ticks.
Event queue uses system ticker to count delay when callback is to be fired.
New ticker implementation for NRF51_DK provides fast and accurate counter for us ticker which shows inaccuracy of the system ticker(which is based on slow and inaccurate lp ticker). This is why measured error grows linearly and percentage form needs to be used.
Currently we use constant tolerance value equal to: 5 [ms].
This patch modifies tolerance to the following form: 5% of measured time [ms].
In this test the lowest delay is equal to 100 [ms], so 5% corresponds to 5 [ms] tolerance - original value. This means that min tolerance is 5 [ms] so this change should not have negative impact on other targets.
I decided to move these files to the targets/TARGET_NORDIC/TARGET_NRF5x/TARGET_NRF51 since us_ticker.h is for sure specific for NRF51_DK and common_rtc.c might be valid also for NRF52, but this needs to be checked while porting NRF52_DK board.
For NR51_DK US_TICKER_OV_LIMIT needs to be increased since if test is run few times in row sometimes fails. This is because NR51_DK is a slow board (16 MHz) with fast and short us ticker counter 1 MHz/16 bits.
Since this change concerns new ticker driver for NRF51_DK it goas on ticker feature branch.
On this branch us ticker is based on 1 MHz higher precision counter (on master is based on 32kHz RTC). As a result of using higher precision counter measurement error increased:
:485::FAIL: Expected 1.060000 Was 1.070478
For delay 1060 ms we measured ~1070 ms so we have about ~1% measurement error which is not bed for this board.
To make it work with 1MHz us ticker increase test tolerance. Define tolerance as follows:
tolerance = 500us + 0.02 * delay.
Since this change concerns new ticker driver for NRF51_DK it goas on ticker feature branch.
On master NRF51_DK Ticker driver uses 32kHz RTC for lp and us ticker. Test uses us ticker to measure lp ticker interrupt scheduling (LowPowerTicker.attach), but since the same hardware is used for both tickers the measurement error is constant. On this branch us ticker uses 1 MHz higher precision clock and the results are different - measurement error grows linearly and shows inaccuracy of the RTC.
Test implements constant delta for measured time equal to 2000 us.
Change delta so it depends on lp ticker tested timeout value:
500us for measurement inaccuracy + 5% tolerance for LowPowerTicker
Provide the following modifications for lp ticker driver:
- According to NRF51_DK reference manual rtc interrupt cannot be controlled by rtc event. In the previous implementation interrupts were enabled permanently and specific interrupt was enabled/disabled by enabling/disabling the specific event. If event is enabled, then event signal is provided to Programmable Peripheral Interconnect (PPI). If interrupt is enabled, then interrupt signal is provided to Nested Vector Interrupt Controller (NVIC). Disable all events permanently. Enable lp ticker overflow interrupt permanently(needed for RTC), disable lp ticker capture/compare interrupt on init (lp_ticker_init) , enable lp ticker interrupt when lp ticker interrupt is set (lp_ticker_set_interrupt), disable lp ticker interrupt on disable request(lp_ticker_disable_interrupt).
- Provide lp ticker data for higher level (freq: 32kHz / len: 24 bits),
- Add the following features to init routine: disable lp ticker interrupt.
- Make ticker driver to operate on ticks instead of us.
- Simplify lp ticker read and set interrupt routines (upper layers handle conversion to us and interrupt scheduling).
According to new ticker standards the following requirements for us ticker are not met on RRF5 boards:
- has a frequency between 250KHz and 8MHz (currently is driven by 32kHz clock)
- ticker increments by 1 each tick (currently is scaled to 1 MHz by incrementing counter by ~31)
Since BLE softdevice uses TIMER0 the proposition is to use high speed TIMER1 for us ticker configured as follows:
- TIMER counter width: 16 bits (max)
- TIMER frequency: 1MHz
This solution also uses Timer's capture/compare register 0 to specify interrupt time and Timer's capture/compare register 1 to read current timer value.
Przemyslaw Stekiel
Ashok Rao
Jesse Marroquin
Mahesh Mahadevan
Bartek Szatkowski
Edmund Hsu
Marc Emmers
jeromecoutant