28.6.3.7 CRC Operation

A cyclic redundancy check (CRC) is an error detection technique used to find errors in data. It is commonly used to determine whether the data during a transmission, or data present in data and program memories has been corrupted or not. A CRC takes a data stream or a block of data as input and generates a 16- or 32-bit output that can be appended to the data and used as a checksum.

When the data is received, the device or application repeats the calculation: If the new CRC result does not match the one calculated earlier, the block contains a data error. The application will then detect this and may take a corrective action, such as requesting the data to be sent again or simply not using the incorrect data.

The CRC engine in DMAC supports two commonly used CRC polynomials: CRC-16 (CRC-CCITT) and CRC-32 (IEEE 802.3). Typically, applying CRC-n (CRC-16 or CRC-32) to a data block of arbitrary length will detect any single alteration that is ≤n bits in length, and will detect the fraction 1-2-n of all longer error bursts.

  • CRC-16:
    • Polynomial: x16+ x12+ x5+ 1
    • Hex value: 0x1021
  • CRC-32:
    • Polynomial: x32+x26+ x23+ x22+x16+ x12+ x11+ x10+ x8+ x7+ x5+ x4+ x2+ x + 1
    • Hex value: 0x04C11DB7

The data source for the CRC engine can either be one of the DMA channels or the APB bus interface, and must be selected by writing to the CRC Input Source bits in the CRC Control register (CRCCTRL.CRCSRC). The CRC engine then takes data input from the selected source and generates a checksum based on these data. The checksum is available in the CRC Checksum register (CRCCHKSUM). When CRC-32 polynomial is used, the final checksum read is bit reversed and complemented, as shown in Figure 28-16.

The CRC polynomial is selected by writing to the CRC Polynomial Type bit in the CRC Control register (CRCCTRL.CRCPOLY), the default is CRC-16. The CRC engine operates on byte only. When the DMA is used as data source for the CRC engine, the DMA channel beat size setting will be used. When used with APB bus interface, the application must select the CRC Beat Size bit field of CRC Control register (CRCCTRL.CRCBEATSIZE). 8-, 16-, or 32-bit bus transfer access type is supported. The corresponding number of bytes will be written in the CRCDATAIN register and the CRC engine will operate on the input data in a byte by byte manner.

Figure 28-16. CRC Generator Block Diagram
CRC on DMA data
CRC-16 or CRC-32 calculations can be performed on data passing through any DMA channel. Once a DMA channel is selected as the source, the CRC engine will continuously generate the CRC on the data passing through the DMA channel. The checksum is available for readout once the DMA transaction is completed or aborted. A CRC can also be generated on SRAM, Flash, or I/O memory by passing these data through a DMA channel. If the latter is done, the destination register for the DMA data can be the data input (CRCDATAIN) register in the CRC engine.
CRC using the I/O interface
Before using the CRC engine with the I/O interface, the application must set the CRC Beat Size bits in the CRC Control register (CRCCTRL.CRCBEATSIZE). 8/16/32-bit bus transfer type can be selected.

CRC can be performed on any data by loading them into the CRC engine using the CPU and writing the data to the CRCDATAIN register. Using this method, an arbitrary number of bytes can be written to the register by the CPU, and CRC is done continuously for each byte. This means if a 32-bit data is written to the CRCDATAIN register the CRC engine takes four cycles to calculate the CRC. The CRC complete is signaled by a set CRCBUSY bit in the CRCSTATUS register. New data can be written only when CRCBUSY flag is not set.