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name: dma-baremetal description: Bare-metal DMA skill for memory-peripheral transfers. Use when configuring DMA channels, circular mode, double buffering, or DMA IRQ completion. Activates on queries about DMA bare-metal, circular buffer, memory-to-peripheral, or DMA stream configuration.

DMA (Bare-Metal)

Purpose

Configure DMA controllers for memory-to-peripheral and peripheral-to-memory transfers: channel/stream setup, burst sizes, circular mode, half-transfer interrupts, and cache coherency on Cortex-M7.

When to Use

• Offloading UART/SPI/ADC bulk transfers from CPU
• Audio/streaming double buffers
• Debugging DMA not triggering or corrupt data

Workflow

1. STM32 DMA2 stream (periph→mem)

/* UART2 RX DMA — Stream5, Channel 4 (verify RM matrix) */
RCC->AHB1ENR |= RCC_AHB1ENR_DMA1EN;

DMA1_Stream5->PAR  = (uint32_t)&USART2->DR;
DMA1_Stream5->M0AR = (uint32_t)rx_buf;
DMA1_Stream5->NDTR = sizeof(rx_buf);
DMA1_Stream5->CR   = DMA_SxCR_MINC     /* mem increment */
                   | DMA_SxCR_TCIE    /* transfer complete IRQ */
                   | DMA_SxCR_CHSEL_2 /* channel 4 */
                   | DMA_SxCR_EN;

USART2->CR3 |= USART_CR3_DMAR;

2. Circular / double buffer

DMA1_Stream5->CR |= DMA_SxCR_CIRC;  /* auto-reload NDTR */
/* HTIF = first half, TCIF = second half — process in IRQ */

3. Cortex-M7 cache (H7)

DMA buffer in non-cacheable region or clean/invalidate D-Cache:

SCB_CleanDCache_by_Addr((void*)tx_buf, len);
/* after DMA TX */
SCB_InvalidateDCache_by_Addr((void*)rx_buf, len);

4. Agent usage

/dma-baremetal Configure UART RX DMA circular buffer on STM32F4

Common Problems

Symptom	Cause	Fix
DMA no start	Stream/channel mismatch	RM DMA request mapping table
Corrupt RX	Cache coherency (M7)	Invalidate after RX complete
NDTR stuck	Peripheral DMA enable missing	USART_CR3 DMAR/DMAT
IRQ flood	Clear flags in ISR	DMA_LISR/HIFCR

Related Skills

• skills/baremetal/uart-serial-baremetal — USART DMA enable
• skills/baremetal/adc-dac-baremetal — ADC DMA mode
• skills/low-level-programming/cpu-cache-opt — cache line concepts