How does the in-application programming for ARM (Cortex M3) work?
I'm working on a custom Cortex-M3-based device and I need to implement in-application programming (IAP) mechanism so that it will be possible to update the device firmware without JTAG (we'll use TFTP or HTTP instead). While the IAP-related code examples available from ST Microelectronics are clear enough to me, I don't really understand how the re-flashing works.
As far as I understand, the instructions are fetched by the CPU from the Flash through the ICode bus (and the prefetch block, of course). So, here's my pretty silly question: why doesn't the running program get corrupted while it re-flashes itself (i.e. changes the Flash memory from which it is being run)?
Answer
A common solution is to have a small reserved area in the flash, where the actual flashing program is stored. When new firmware has been downloaded just make a jump to the code in this area.
Of course, this small area is not overwritten when flashing firmware, it can only be done by other means (like JTAG). So make sure this flashing-program works good to start with. :)