How to speed up your project with DMA
Intro DMA ( direct memory access ) is a topic that's similar to pointers in C - it's not easy for everyone to visualize how it works. My goal for this blog post is to explain, in the simplest way possible, how it works and why your project can benefit from proper use of it. What's it all about? DMA is a useful feature for a CPU/MCU to have because it means that data can move around without the CPU (your code) having to do the work. In other words, DMA can move a block of data from memory-to-memory, peripheral-to-memory or memory-to-peripheral independently from the CPU. For people used to programming multi-core CPUs with a multi-threaded operating system, that may not sound very special. For those of us familiar with programming slow, low power, single threaded, embedded processors, it can make quite a difference. Here's a practical example - sending data to an SPI device (e.g. a small LCD display): Without DMA <prepare data1 - 10ms > <send data1 to SPI - 10ms...