AWR1843: Stack size check and its best setting

Checking the stack size with ROV is a good method. Another way to check (perhaps a bit old school) would be to pre-fill the end of the stack with a pattern like 0xbeef. Then simply let the program run and see how much of it is overwritten.  You don't want to fill the whole stack because the top part of it is in use.

Determining the proper stack size can be a challenge, because it depends on how the software is written.  Software that uses a lot of local variables, or has functions called recursively (or more commonly, a deep call stack) will require a much larger stack.  Well behaved software that restricts it's usage of local variables can get by with a much smaller stack.  It is always good practice to audit the application program for stack usage.

Fortunately, setting the stack size only becomes important when data memory becomes full.  If and when it does, then one of the methods above needs to be done to find the max size and choose a value with a small margin - say  0.5KB to 1KB.  How small the margin is depends on how much risk you are willing to tolerate.  Of course, the cost of a stack overflow is a crashed or corrupted program.

  -dave