uspiflash

A generator of tiny, single-file C libraries that detect SPI flash chips and report their capabilities, built from the spiflash database, for early-boot and embedded code: Zephyr, MicroPython, the LiteX BIOS, bare-metal Cortex-M and RISC-V (down to WCH's CH32V003), and Linux spidev.

Every byte the library puts on a device is measured, across a wide range of GCC, LLVM and SDCC versions.

Quick start

pip install uspiflash
uspiflash generate -o uspiflash.h --level full

Include the header wherever you need it; in exactly one C file, define USF_IMPLEMENTATION first, so that file holds the library's code:

#define USF_IMPLEMENTATION
#include "uspiflash.h"

/* Yours, defined elsewhere: an SPI transaction (chip select held: send
 * txlen bytes, then read rxlen), and a console that takes one character. */
void my_xfer(void *ctx, const uint8_t *tx, uint8_t txlen, uint8_t *rx, uint8_t rxlen);
void my_putc(void *ctx, char ch);

void show_flash(void)
{
    usf_bus bus = { my_xfer, 0 };
    usf_probe_result r;

    usf_probe(&bus, &r);
    usf_print(r.chip, r.count, USF_PRINT_OPCODES, my_putc, 0);
}

The full C API, with a worked example of each step above: docs/generated-file.md (also at https://uspiflash.readthedocs.io/). Already on Linux with a spidev device: skip the generator and use uspiflash-linux instead, built from source or sudo apt install uspiflash-linux from the apt repository below.

Size

For SPI NOR flash (--type nor, the default), compiled for cortex-m0 with Debian clang version 19.1.7 (3+b1) at -Os, the read level costs 11,275 bytes of flash and full 54,547 bytes, code and tables together, with no static RAM. Every configuration (all chip types, and NAND), every target, and how they are measured: sizes/README.md.

Output

A generated file's usf_print() and usf_print_json() print exactly what spiflash id and spiflash id --json print, byte for byte, less what the file was generated without: the from: line and per-opcode sources without sources, conflicts without conflicts, the datasheet line without datasheet, the JSON datasheets, records and records' at without datasheets, records and provenance, the sfdp: lines without sfdp_summary, and the JSON sfdp without sfdp_dumps. The tests check this against spiflash 0.0.post108 (uspiflash.VERIFIED_SPIFLASH). --with sfdp adds usf_sfdp_read(), which reads and decodes the chip's own SFDP tables (JESD216).

SPI NOR is the primary target: uspiflash generate keeps only SPI NOR chips unless told otherwise (--type nor --type nand keeps every chip, NAND included; --type nand only NAND).

On 16-bit targets (AVR, msp430, the 8051) the levels id to full fit, if the part has the flash (full is about 59 KB of code and tables); the datasheet, datasheets, records, provenance and jep106 extras do not, as their tables pass the 64 KiB a 16-bit pointer can address. On AVR, define USF_ROM as a flash address space (avr-gcc's __flash) to keep the tables in flash rather than copied to RAM.

Install

pip install uspiflash          # or: uv tool install uspiflash

Or, as Debian packages, from the signed apt repository at https://mith.ro/uspiflash/. There is one per suite (bookworm, trixie, forky and sid), with two packages:

• python3-uspiflash, the generator (the uspiflash command). It is Architecture: all, so it installs on any architecture, and it depends on python3-spiflash, which is not in this repository: add spiflash's own apt repository first, then uspiflash's.
• uspiflash-linux, the spidev tool. It depends only on libc, so it needs only uspiflash's repository. It is built for amd64, i386, arm64, armhf and riscv64 (riscv64 from trixie on). The armhf package is Debian's armhf (ARMv7 and later): Raspberry Pi OS 32-bit on an ARMv6 board (Pi 1, Zero) cannot run it; a 64-bit Pi uses the arm64 package.

Put your suite's name in place of trixie below (Raspberry Pi OS uses Debian's codenames). For the generator, spiflash's repository:

sudo install -d -m0755 /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://mith.ro/spiflash/spiflash.gpg | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/spiflash.gpg > /dev/null
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/spiflash.gpg] https://mith.ro/spiflash/trixie/ ./" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/spiflash.list

spiflash's repository's signing key is B528 6C61 A99A 9E6A 5B8A 8E5B 6B2D 7683 DE01 081D (gpg --show-keys /etc/apt/keyrings/spiflash.gpg shows it).

For either package, uspiflash's repository:

sudo install -d -m0755 /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://mith.ro/uspiflash/uspiflash.gpg | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/uspiflash.gpg > /dev/null
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/uspiflash.gpg] https://mith.ro/uspiflash/trixie/ ./" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/uspiflash.list

uspiflash's repository's signing key is 2E19 5D58 706D 44E8 5704 1566 04FA D17C 2A3B 8344 (gpg --show-keys /etc/apt/keyrings/uspiflash.gpg shows it).

sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3-uspiflash      # provides the uspiflash command
sudo apt install uspiflash-linux        # the spidev tool

Work in progress: the design is in docs/superpowers/specs/.

License

Apache-2.0; see LICENSE.