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Serial Flash Protected Area

Is there any reason why the SPI flash chips always have the protected area in the upper addresses at the end of the available memory?

All of the CPUs that I know start booting from the SPI flash by reading some information which begins at the address 0. So if the beginning of the flash gets corrupt, then the CPU is dead and we can't reprogram the flash by software. Therefore it seems logical to protect the beginning of the flash, not the end.

But why the protection is always done in the opposite way? Is there any logical reason for that?

Vladimir Vassilevsky DSP and Mixed Signal Design Consultant

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Vladimir Vassilevsky
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I think it carries over from Serial EEPROMs, and pre-dates booting from Serial memory. In Serial EE's it allowed some small protected area, above the normal data-storage area, and given the widely varying sizes of Serial EE (but all with common 0000 address point) to protect the top area, away from the data space.

I'm waiting for 'run from serial memory', as the next step, for code that does not need to be fast :)

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

Oh, that would be marvelous! Also, it would be great to have a CPU instruction which executes the contents of a register as an opcode :)

Vladimir Vassilevsky DSP and Mixed Signal Design Consultant

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Reply to
Vladimir Vassilevsky

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