16.7.4 Overrun Interrupt

When the DMA receives a trigger to start a new message before the current message is completed, then the Overrun Interrupt Flag (DMAxORIF) bit is set.

This condition indicates that the DMA is being requested before its current transaction is finished. This implies that the active DMA may not be able to keep up with the demands from the peripheral module being serviced, which may result in data loss.

The DMAxORIF flag being set does not cause the current DMA transfer to terminate.

The overrun interrupt is only available for trigger sources that are edge-based and is not available for sources that are level-based. Therefore, a level-based interrupt source does not trigger a DMA overrun error due to the potential latency issues in the system.

An example of an interrupt that can use the overrun interrupt is a timer overflow (or period match) interrupt. This event only happens every time the timer rolls over and is not dependent on any other system conditions.

An example of an interrupt that does not allow the overrun interrupt is the UART TX buffer. The UART will continue to assert the interrupt until the DMA is able to process the message. Due to latency issues, the DMA may not be able to service an empty buffer immediately, but the UART continues to assert its transmit interrupt until it is serviced. If overrun was allowed in this case, the overrun would occur almost immediately, as the module samples the interrupt sources every instruction cycle.