test: gate autobaud's logic floor, and say what an RC oscillator costs

The ATtiny13A run left autobaud's low-clock lock looking unreliable: 1/5 at
19200 on a 1.2 MHz RC part. The simulator does not reproduce it. At an exact
clock the calibration is solid down to ~36 cycles a bit and fails outright by
~31 — a sharp edge, not a fraying one — where the real part was already 1 in 5
by ~59. So the effect is the oscillator's own jitter and not backend logic, and
the two floors are different quantities about a factor of two apart.

Both are worth having. pureboot.autobaud gates a tight-bit point, since its two
existing clock points both sat near 100 cycles a bit and would not notice the
floor moving. The README carries the other half: both floors side by side, the
per-clock envelope measured on silicon, and the reason budgeting the logic's ~36
on an RC part is wrong.

It also carries the trap that produced the confusion. On a patched-vector chip an
erased application region walks back up into the loader, so every expired window
opens another and the host's retries eventually catch the pulse — 5/5 where the
same part with an application resident gives 1/5. Measure with an application in
place, or the fixture flatters the backend.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
2026-07-27 16:44:21 +02:00
committed by BlackMark
parent 77dd45aeca
commit 7702c6b700
2 changed files with 54 additions and 1 deletions

View File

@@ -141,13 +141,45 @@ def main():
print(f" {label}: locked at {hz} Hz / {baud} Bd, flash+EEPROM verified"
+ (", hand-over ok" if hand_over else ""))
def must_lock(hz, baud, label):
"""The calibration alone, at a tight bit period. Nothing is programmed —
the question is only whether the loader can still measure the pulse."""
dump = os.path.join(workdir, f"flash_{label}.bin")
device = pbsim.Device(device_bin, elf, mcu, str(hz), base_hex, page, baud, dump,
link="sw:B0,B1")
try:
port = pb.Port(device.pty, baud)
try:
live = pb.Loader(port).connect_autobaud(15)
if live.version != pb.NEWEST_LOADER:
fail(f"{label}: loader reports pureboot {live.version}")
finally:
port.close()
finally:
device.stop()
print(f" {label}: locked at {hz} Hz / {baud} Bd ({hz / baud:.0f} cycles a bit)")
# The app fixture is built for one clock; the hand-over banners there. A
# second point at double that clock, same loader binary, proves the lock is
# measured, not baked in — the whole point of autobaud. (Doubling keeps the
# bit period healthy; halving would drop it below the software UART's floor.)
round_trip(app_hz, app_baud, "clock-a", hand_over=True)
round_trip(app_hz * 2, app_baud, "clock-b", hand_over=False)
print("pbautobaud: calibration lock and flash/EEPROM/fuse round-trip pass at both clocks")
# Both points above sit near 100 cycles a bit, which is comfortable. The
# calibration's real floor is far tighter, and it is worth a gate: measured
# here, the lock is solid down to ~36 cycles a bit and fails outright by ~31
# — a sharp edge, not a fraying one. This pins the tightest standard rate the
# fixture's clock reaches, so a change that raises the floor is caught.
#
# It does *not* bound what a real deployment can use. On silicon the
# oscillator's own jitter costs roughly a factor of two: an ATtiny13A on its
# factory RC trim was reliable at ~118 cycles a bit and already locking only
# 1 attempt in 5 by ~59, which no exact-clock simulation can show. The
# deployable envelope is a README matter; this is the logic's floor.
must_lock(app_hz, app_baud * 2, "tight-bit")
print("pbautobaud: calibration lock and flash/EEPROM/fuse round-trip pass at both clocks, "
"and the tight bit period still locks")
if __name__ == "__main__":