CCS/AWR1642BOOST: SPI_open aborts execution

Part Number: AWR1642BOOST

Tool/software: Code Composer Studio

I'm trying to implement SPI communication on the Traffic Monitoring demo. I use this code to open the SPI driver:

SPI_Handle      SPIhandle;
SPI_Params      params;

DMA_Handle      dmaHandle;
DMA_Params      dmaParams;
int32_t         errCode;

DMA_Params_init(&dmaParams);
dmaHandle = DMA_open(0, &dmaParams, &errCode);
if (dmaHandle == NULL)
  {
      System_printf("Open DMA driver failed with error=%d\n", errCode);
  }

SPI_init();
SPI_Params_init(&params);
params.mode  = SPI_MASTER;
params.u.masterParams.bitRate = MSS_SYS_VCLK;
params.u.masterParams.numSlaves = 1;
params.u.masterParams.slaveProf[0].chipSelect = 0;
params.u.masterParams.slaveProf[0].ramBufLen = MIBSPI_RAM_MAX_ELEM/2;
params.u.masterParams.slaveProf[0].dmaCfg.txDmaChanNum =1U;
params.u.masterParams.slaveProf[0].dmaCfg.rxDmaChanNum =0U;
params.frameFormat = SPI_POL0_PHA0; 
params.shiftFormat = SPI_MSB_FIRST;

params.dmaEnable = 1;
params.dmaHandle = dmaHandle;
params.pinMode   = SPI_PINMODE_3PIN;
SPIhandle = SPI_open(0, &params);
if (!SPIhandle) {
    System_printf("!!!!!!!!!!!!! SPI did not open\n");
}

when I am debugging, as long as it reaches the SPI_open line, system aborts execution, this is the console feed I'm getting:

[C674X_0] Debug: Logging UART Instance @00816110 has been opened successfully
Debug: DSS Mailbox Handle @0080c488
Debug: MMWDemoDSS create event handle succeeded
Debug: MMWDemoDSS mmWave Control Initialization succeeded
[Cortex_R4_0] **********************************************
Debug: Launching the Millimeter Wave Demo
**********************************************
Debug: MMWDemoMSS Launched the Initialization Task
Debug: System Heap (TCM): Size: 98304, Used = 4880, Free = 93424 bytes
ti.sysbios.heaps.HeapMem: line 446: assertion failure: A_invalidFree: Invalid free
xdc.runtime.Error.raise: terminating execution

What could cause this?