ARM: STM32F7: hard fault caused by unaligned Memory Access

---

Information in this knowledgebase article applies to:

• Keil MDK v. 5.16a and later
• Keil µVision IDE v. 5.16.1.0 and later
• ARM Compiler 5 (Armcc) v. 5.06 (build 20) and later
• Keil MDK Middleware v. 6.5.0 and later
• CMSIS-Pack v. 4.3.0 and later
• Compiler Pack v. 1.0.0 and later
• STMicroelectronics STM32F7xx microcontroller

---

SYMPTOM

If you use an STM32F7xx microcontroller with an external SDRAM, the Cortex-M7 core may unexpectedly run into the hard fault handler because of unaligned access. This may happen for example, when the frame buffer of an LCD, a RAM filesystem or any other data is located into the SDRAM address range 0xC0000000 - 0xC03FFFFF (max. 4MB). The hard fault is executed although the bit UNALIGN_TRP (bit 3) in the CCR register is not enabled.

CAUSE

In general, RAM accesses on Cortex-M7 based devices do not have to be aligned in any way. The Cortex-M7 core can handle unaligned accesses by hardware. Usually, variables should be naturally aligned because these accesses are slightly faster than unaligned accesses.

STM32F7xx devices have the external SDRAM mapped to the address range 0xC0000000 - 0xC03FFFFF (max. 4MB). According to the ARMv7-M Architecture Reference Manual chapter B3.1 (table B3-1), the area 0xC0000000-0xDFFFFFFF (32MB) is specified as Device Memory Type. According to chapter A3.2.1, all accesses to Device Memory Types must be naturally aligned. If they are not, a hard fault will execute no matter if the bit UNALIGN_TRP (bit 3) in the CCR register is enabled or not.

RESOLUTION

There are several possible solutions for the STM32F7xx:

1. Enable the MPU for this region

This is the solution we recommend and which we are using in our emWin GUI Demo for this microcontroller. This can be achieved by the following code that needs to be called before the SDRAM is accessed.

static void MPU_Config (void) {
  MPU_Region_InitTypeDef MPU_InitStruct;

  /* Disable the MPU */
  HAL_MPU_Disable();

  /* Configure the MPU attributes for SDRAM */
  MPU_InitStruct.Enable = MPU_REGION_ENABLE;
  MPU_InitStruct.BaseAddress = 0xC0000000;
  MPU_InitStruct.Size = MPU_REGION_SIZE_4MB;
  MPU_InitStruct.AccessPermission = MPU_REGION_FULL_ACCESS;
  MPU_InitStruct.IsBufferable = MPU_ACCESS_NOT_BUFFERABLE;
  MPU_InitStruct.IsCacheable = MPU_ACCESS_NOT_CACHEABLE;
  MPU_InitStruct.IsShareable = MPU_ACCESS_NOT_SHAREABLE;
  MPU_InitStruct.Number = MPU_REGION_NUMBER0;
  MPU_InitStruct.TypeExtField = MPU_TEX_LEVEL1;
  MPU_InitStruct.SubRegionDisable = 0x00;
  MPU_InitStruct.DisableExec = MPU_INSTRUCTION_ACCESS_DISABLE;

  HAL_MPU_ConfigRegion(&MPU_InitStruct);

  /* Enable the MPU */
  HAL_MPU_Enable(MPU_PRIVILEGED_DEFAULT);
}

This code initializes the MPU so that the SDRAM memory area is considered as Normal Memory type instead of Device Memory type. This disables the access alignment restrictions.

2. Remap the SDRAM to a different address

The SDRAM could also be remapped to address 0x60000000 with the following code:

  RCC->APB2ENR   |= RCC_APB2ENR_SYSCFGEN;
  SYSCFG->MEMRMP |= SYSCFG_MEMRMP_SWP_FMC_0;

The data of the application needs to be linked into this area as well. The disadvantage is that this address area is usually used by external NOR Flash or PSRAM or SRAM. These external memory devices could not be used in this case.

3. Generate code with the natural alignment

If only your own code accesses the SDRAM area, you can compile your modules with the compiler option --no_unaligned_access to enforce code which uses natural alignment. This code will then be less efficient. We intentionally do not use this compiler directive for our middleware libraries (graphics, files system and TCP/IP stack) to provide best performance and code density.

MORE INFORMATION

• Refer to Application Note 209, Using Cortex-M3 and Cortex-M4 Fault Exceptions

• Refer to System Control and Configuration in the µVision User's Guide.

COMMUNITY THREADS

Please also see these Arm Community posts

• ARM: STM32F7: hardfault caused by unaligned memory access

---

Last Reviewed: Wednesday, February 24, 2021

---

Did this article provide the answer you needed?
Yes No Not Sure