How to allocate memory on DSP based on codec engine in DM3730

I suspect that you are running out of Memory for the segment 0 from which you are trying to allocate memory.  Does it work if you leave memory configuration in tcf to DDR2?

Here is some related info about configuring memory heaps for BIOS 5:

http://e2e.ti.com/support/embedded/tirtos/f/355/p/63829/231552.aspx#231552

You might also find the following information useful:

http://e2e.ti.com/support/dsp/davinci_digital_media_processors/f/537/t/346316.aspx

Hi Armie Reynoso,

Thks for your reply.

When I left memory configuration in tcf to DDR2, the memory request also failed. GT_trace prints the address of 

the allcoated memory is 0x0.  

I agree with your deduction about running out of memory. So, I tried to leave memory configuration to DDRALGHEAP which is large enough. And the memory map is set as follows:

comment: "DDRALGHEAP: off-chip memory for dynamic algmem allocation",
name: "DDRALGHEAP",
base: 0x88000000, //128MB
len: 0x07600000, // 118 MB
space: "code/data"
},
{
comment: "DDR2: off-chip memory for application code and data",
name: "DDR2",
base: 0x8F600000,
len: 0x00400000, // 4 MB
space: "code/data"
}

However, I still can not use Memory_alloc() function on DSP. I think some setup details remain

to be done for solving the problem. But I still donot know how to set these configuration.

Looking forward to further suggestions and thks again!

F.H. Sun

You previously mentioned that malloc() works. When using DSP/BIOS, all malloc calls are in routed to MEM_alloc using the location configured by "MEM.MALLOCSEG". 

Calling Memory_alloc with params.seg = 0 may be allocating from a different memory segment.  As all the Memory_* function calls are abstracted to call MEM_alloc, MEM_*, etc. on the devices running BIOS.

The following configuration line:

bios.MEM.MALLOCSEG  = bios.DDR2

set which Segment location malloc/free calls will allocated from.  In order for Memory_alloc -> MEM_alloc to allocate from the same memory heap as what was configured in bios."MEM.MALLOCSEG", you can do something as follows in your config(*.tcf):

bios.DDR2.enableHeapLabel = true;
bios.DDR2["heapLabel"]    = prog.extern("SEG0");

Then in your C code, you can add the following:

extern Int SEG0;

Memory_AllocParams allocParams;
allocParams.type = Memory_CONTIGPOOL;
allocParams.flags = Memory_NONCACHED;
allocParams.align = 128;
allocParams.seg = SEG0;

tempBuf2 = (XDAS_UInt8 *)Memory_alloc( minSamples, &allocParams);

For sake of completeness, you would typically also enable a heap creation for that particular memory segment with a size as follows:

bios.DDR2.createHeap      = true;
bios.IDDR2.enableHeapLabel = true;
bios.DDR2["heapLabel"]    = prog.extern("SEG0");
bios.DDR2.heapSize        = 0x2000;

In your case, this may not be necessary since you indicated that calling malloc works which means that a heap somewhere in your configuration was already being created for that memory segment used by malloc.