Filling non-contiguous MEMORY blocks

[R. Diez]

Hi all:

I have an STM32F407VGT6 microcontroller with several non-contiguous MEMORY blocks: SRAM1, SRAM2, SRAM3 and SRAM CCM (core coupled memory). It would be nice if the linker could automatically fill one after the other with data sections (I am simplifying some hardware restrictions).

The flash memory layout is also weird. The interrupt/boot vector must be on the first flash sector, the next flash sectors are also small, but from a particular sector number, the flash sectors are much bigger. Ideally, you want to fill the first sector with the vector table and then some text sections (executable code), then skip a few small flash sectors where you want to store user configuration data, and afterwards continue filling the big flash sectors with the rest of the text sections.

Is there a way to tell the linker to fill a MEMORY block, and, when it's full, continue filling another MEMORY block?

I am doing this manually now, which is a pain and wastes space.

I also have an STM32G0B1RET6 microcontroller with a hardware bug (errata) which triggers when the CPU crosses flash banks when executing code. Therefore, you want to leave an unused space in the middle of flash (between flash banks).

I haven't found a way to tell the linker to leave a particular address range unused, or to place a particular section at a particular address, so that other sections are placed either before or after that area in a MEMORY block. Or have I missed something?

One way to achieve that would be to define two MEMORY blocks for the Flash memory, but then I would have the same problem as described above: how to tell the linker to continue placing sections in the second Flash block when the first one is full.

Thanks in advance,
   rdiez