1 NAND FLASH commands and notes
6 # Dave Ellis, SIXNET, dge@sixnetio.com
8 # SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+
13 Print a list of all of the bad blocks in the current device.
16 Print information about the current NAND device.
19 Make device `num' the current device and print information about it.
21 nand erase off|partition size
22 nand erase clean [off|partition size]
23 Erase `size' bytes starting at offset `off'. Alternatively partition
24 name can be specified, in this case size will be eventually limited
25 to not exceed partition size (this behaviour applies also to read
26 and write commands). Only complete erase blocks can be erased.
28 If `erase' is specified without an offset or size, the entire flash
29 is erased. If `erase' is specified with partition but without an
30 size, the entire partition is erased.
32 If `clean' is specified, a JFFS2-style clean marker is written to
33 each block after it is erased.
35 This command will not erase blocks that are marked bad. There is
36 a debug option in cmd_nand.c to allow bad blocks to be erased.
37 Please read the warning there before using it, as blocks marked
38 bad by the manufacturer must _NEVER_ be erased.
41 Print information about all of the NAND devices found.
43 nand read addr ofs|partition size
44 Read `size' bytes from `ofs' in NAND flash to `addr'. Blocks that
45 are marked bad are skipped. If a page cannot be read because an
46 uncorrectable data error is found, the command stops with an error.
48 nand read.oob addr ofs|partition size
49 Read `size' bytes from the out-of-band data area corresponding to
50 `ofs' in NAND flash to `addr'. This is limited to the 16 bytes of
51 data for one 512-byte page or 2 256-byte pages. There is no check
52 for bad blocks or ECC errors.
54 nand write addr ofs|partition size
55 Write `size' bytes from `addr' to `ofs' in NAND flash. Blocks that
56 are marked bad are skipped. If a page cannot be read because an
57 uncorrectable data error is found, the command stops with an error.
59 As JFFS2 skips blocks similarly, this allows writing a JFFS2 image,
60 as long as the image is short enough to fit even after skipping the
61 bad blocks. Compact images, such as those produced by mkfs.jffs2
62 should work well, but loading an image copied from another flash is
63 going to be trouble if there are any bad blocks.
65 nand write.trimffs addr ofs|partition size
66 Enabled by the CONFIG_CMD_NAND_TRIMFFS macro. This command will write to
67 the NAND flash in a manner identical to the 'nand write' command
68 described above -- with the additional check that all pages at the end
69 of eraseblocks which contain only 0xff data will not be written to the
70 NAND flash. This behaviour is required when flashing UBI images
71 containing UBIFS volumes as per the UBI FAQ[1].
73 [1] http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/doc/ubi.html#L_flasher_algo
75 nand write.oob addr ofs|partition size
76 Write `size' bytes from `addr' to the out-of-band data area
77 corresponding to `ofs' in NAND flash. This is limited to the 16 bytes
78 of data for one 512-byte page or 2 256-byte pages. There is no check
81 nand read.raw addr ofs|partition [count]
82 nand write.raw addr ofs|partition [count]
83 Read or write one or more pages at "ofs" in NAND flash, from or to
84 "addr" in memory. This is a raw access, so ECC is avoided and the
85 OOB area is transferred as well. If count is absent, it is assumed
86 to be one page. As with .yaffs2 accesses, the data is formatted as
87 a packed sequence of "data, oob, data, oob, ..." -- no alignment of
88 individual pages is maintained.
90 Configuration Options:
92 CONFIG_SYS_NAND_U_BOOT_OFFS
93 NAND Offset from where SPL will read u-boot image. This is the starting
94 address of u-boot MTD partition in NAND.
97 Enables NAND support and commmands.
99 CONFIG_CMD_NAND_TORTURE
100 Enables the torture command (see description of this command below).
102 CONFIG_SYS_MAX_NAND_DEVICE
103 The maximum number of NAND devices you want to support.
105 CONFIG_SYS_NAND_MAX_ECCPOS
106 If specified, overrides the maximum number of ECC bytes
107 supported. Useful for reducing image size, especially with SPL.
108 This must be at least 48 if nand_base.c is used.
110 CONFIG_SYS_NAND_MAX_OOBFREE
111 If specified, overrides the maximum number of free OOB regions
112 supported. Useful for reducing image size, especially with SPL.
113 This must be at least 2 if nand_base.c is used.
115 CONFIG_SYS_NAND_MAX_CHIPS
116 The maximum number of NAND chips per device to be supported.
118 CONFIG_SYS_NAND_SELF_INIT
119 Traditionally, glue code in drivers/mtd/nand/nand.c has driven
120 the initialization process -- it provides the mtd and nand
121 structs, calls a board init function for a specific device,
122 calls nand_scan(), and registers with mtd.
124 This arrangement does not provide drivers with the flexibility to
125 run code between nand_scan_ident() and nand_scan_tail(), or other
126 deviations from the "normal" flow.
128 If a board defines CONFIG_SYS_NAND_SELF_INIT, drivers/mtd/nand/nand.c
129 will make one call to board_nand_init(), with no arguments. That
130 function is responsible for calling a driver init function for
131 each NAND device on the board, that performs all initialization
132 tasks except setting mtd->name, and registering with the rest of
133 U-Boot. Those last tasks are accomplished by calling nand_register()
134 on the new mtd device.
136 Example of new init to be added to the end of an existing driver
140 * devnum is the device number to be used in nand commands
141 * and in mtd->name. Must be less than
142 * CONFIG_SYS_NAND_MAX_DEVICE.
144 mtd = &nand_info[devnum];
146 /* chip is struct nand_chip, and is now provided by the driver. */
150 * Fill in appropriate values if this driver uses these fields,
151 * or uses the standard read_byte/write_buf/etc. functions from
152 * nand_base.c that use these fields.
154 chip.IO_ADDR_R = ...;
155 chip.IO_ADDR_W = ...;
157 if (nand_scan_ident(mtd, CONFIG_SYS_MAX_NAND_CHIPS, NULL))
161 * Insert here any code you wish to run after the chip has been
162 * identified, but before any other I/O is done.
165 if (nand_scan_tail(mtd))
168 if (nand_register(devnum))
171 In addition to providing more flexibility to the driver, it reduces
172 the difference between a U-Boot driver and its Linux counterpart.
173 nand_init() is now reduced to calling board_nand_init() once, and
174 printing a size summary. This should also make it easier to
175 transition to delayed NAND initialization.
177 Please convert your driver even if you don't need the extra
178 flexibility, so that one day we can eliminate the old mechanism.
181 CONFIG_SYS_NAND_ONFI_DETECTION
182 Enables detection of ONFI compliant devices during probe.
183 And fetching device parameters flashed on device, by parsing
187 Enables software based BCH ECC algorithm present in lib/bch.c
188 This is used by SoC platforms which do not have built-in ELM
189 hardware engine required for BCH ECC correction.
191 CONFIG_SYS_NAND_BUSWIDTH_16BIT
192 Indicates that NAND device has 16-bit wide data-bus. In absence of this
193 config, bus-width of NAND device is assumed to be either 8-bit and later
194 determined by reading ONFI params.
195 Above config is useful when NAND device's bus-width information cannot
196 be determined from on-chip ONFI params, like in following scenarios:
197 - SPL boot does not support reading of ONFI parameters. This is done to
198 keep SPL code foot-print small.
199 - In current U-Boot flow using nand_init(), driver initialization
200 happens in board_nand_init() which is called before any device probe
201 (nand_scan_ident + nand_scan_tail), thus device's ONFI parameters are
202 not available while configuring controller. So a static CONFIG_NAND_xx
203 is needed to know the device's bus-width in advance.
204 Some drivers using above config are:
205 drivers/mtd/nand/mxc_nand.c
206 drivers/mtd/nand/ndfc.c
207 drivers/mtd/nand/omap_gpmc.c
210 Platform specific options
211 =========================
212 CONFIG_NAND_OMAP_GPMC
213 Enables omap_gpmc.c driver for OMAPx and AMxxxx platforms.
214 GPMC controller is used for parallel NAND flash devices, and can
215 do ECC calculation (not ECC error detection) for HAM1, BCH4, BCH8
216 and BCH16 ECC algorithms.
219 Enables omap_elm.c driver for OMAPx and AMxxxx platforms.
220 ELM controller is used for ECC error detection (not ECC calculation)
221 of BCH4, BCH8 and BCH16 ECC algorithms.
222 Some legacy platforms like OMAP3xx do not have in-built ELM h/w engine,
223 thus such SoC platforms need to depend on software library for ECC error
224 detection. However ECC calculation on such plaforms would still be
225 done by GPMC controller.
227 CONFIG_SPL_NAND_AM33XX_BCH
228 Enables SPL-NAND driver (am335x_spl_bch.c) which supports ELM based
229 hardware ECC correction. This is useful for platforms which have ELM
230 hardware engine and use NAND boot mode.
231 Some legacy platforms like OMAP3xx do not have in-built ELM h/w engine,
232 so those platforms should use CONFIG_SPL_NAND_SIMPLE for enabling
233 SPL-NAND driver with software ECC correction support.
235 CONFIG_NAND_OMAP_ECCSCHEME
236 On OMAP platforms, this CONFIG specifies NAND ECC scheme.
237 It can take following values:
238 OMAP_ECC_HAM1_CODE_SW
239 1-bit Hamming code using software lib.
240 (for legacy devices only)
241 OMAP_ECC_HAM1_CODE_HW
242 1-bit Hamming code using GPMC hardware.
243 (for legacy devices only)
244 OMAP_ECC_BCH4_CODE_HW_DETECTION_SW
245 4-bit BCH code (unsupported)
246 OMAP_ECC_BCH4_CODE_HW
247 4-bit BCH code (unsupported)
248 OMAP_ECC_BCH8_CODE_HW_DETECTION_SW
250 - ecc calculation using GPMC hardware engine,
251 - error detection using software library.
252 - requires CONFIG_BCH to enable software BCH library
253 (For legacy device which do not have ELM h/w engine)
254 OMAP_ECC_BCH8_CODE_HW
256 - ecc calculation using GPMC hardware engine,
257 - error detection using ELM hardware engine.
258 OMAP_ECC_BCH16_CODE_HW
260 - ecc calculation using GPMC hardware engine,
261 - error detection using ELM hardware engine.
263 How to select ECC scheme on OMAP and AMxx platforms ?
264 -----------------------------------------------------
265 Though higher ECC schemes have more capability to detect and correct
266 bit-flips, but still selection of ECC scheme is dependent on following
267 - hardware engines present in SoC.
268 Some legacy OMAP SoC do not have ELM h/w engine thus such
269 SoC cannot support BCHx_HW ECC schemes.
270 - size of OOB/Spare region
271 With higher ECC schemes, more OOB/Spare area is required to
272 store ECC. So choice of ECC scheme is limited by NAND oobsize.
274 In general following expression can help:
275 NAND_OOBSIZE >= 2 + (NAND_PAGESIZE / 512) * ECC_BYTES
277 NAND_OOBSIZE = number of bytes available in
278 OOB/spare area per NAND page.
279 NAND_PAGESIZE = bytes in main-area of NAND page.
280 ECC_BYTES = number of ECC bytes generated to
281 protect 512 bytes of data, which is:
282 3 for HAM1_xx ecc schemes
283 7 for BCH4_xx ecc schemes
284 14 for BCH8_xx ecc schemes
285 26 for BCH16_xx ecc schemes
287 example to check for BCH16 on 2K page NAND
290 2 + (2048 / 512) * 26 = 106 > NAND_OOBSIZE
291 Thus BCH16 cannot be supported on 2K page NAND.
293 However, for 4K pagesize NAND
297 2 + (4096 / 512) * 26 = 210 < NAND_OOBSIZE
298 Thus BCH16 can be supported on 4K page NAND.
301 CONFIG_NAND_OMAP_GPMC_PREFETCH
302 On OMAP platforms that use the GPMC controller
303 (CONFIG_NAND_OMAP_GPMC_PREFETCH), this options enables the code that
304 uses the prefetch mode to speed up read operations.
309 The Disk On Chip driver is currently broken and has been for some time.
310 There is a driver in drivers/mtd/nand, taken from Linux, that works with
311 the current NAND system but has not yet been adapted to the u-boot
314 Additional improvements to the NAND subsystem by Guido Classen, 10-10-2006
316 JFFS2 related commands:
318 implement "nand erase clean" and old "nand erase"
319 using both the new code which is able to skip bad blocks
320 "nand erase clean" additionally writes JFFS2-cleanmarkers in the oob.
322 Miscellaneous and testing commands:
324 create an artificial bad block (for testing bad block handling)
326 "scrub [offset length]"
327 like "erase" but don't skip bad block. Instead erase them.
328 DANGEROUS!!! Factory set bad blocks will be lost. Use only
329 to remove artificial bad blocks created with the "markbad" command.
332 Torture block to determine if it is still reliable.
333 Enabled by the CONFIG_CMD_NAND_TORTURE configuration option.
334 This command returns 0 if the block is still reliable, else 1.
335 If the block is detected as unreliable, it is up to the user to decide to
336 mark this block as bad.
337 The analyzed block is put through 3 erase / write cycles (or less if the block
338 is detected as unreliable earlier).
339 This command can be used in scripts, e.g. together with the markbad command to
340 automate retries and handling of possibly newly detected bad blocks if the
341 nand write command fails.
342 It can also be used manually by users having seen some NAND errors in logs to
343 search the root cause of these errors.
344 The underlying nand_torture() function is also useful for code willing to
345 automate actions following a nand->write() error. This would e.g. be required
346 in order to program or update safely firmware to NAND, especially for the UBI
347 part of such firmware.
350 NAND locking command (for chips with active LOCKPRE pin)
353 set NAND chip to lock state (all pages locked)
356 set NAND chip to lock tight state (software can't change locking anymore)
359 displays current locking status of all pages
361 "nand unlock [offset] [size]"
362 unlock consecutive area (can be called multiple times for different areas)
364 "nand unlock.allexcept [offset] [size]"
365 unlock all except specified consecutive area
367 I have tested the code with board containing 128MiB NAND large page chips
368 and 32MiB small page chips.