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Cyclone for ARM devices User Manual
Cyclone for ARM
®
devices
11
AUTOMATIC SERIAL NUMBER MECHANISM
When producing a microcontroller- or microprocessor-based product, it is
often useful to program a unique serial number into the permanent memory
(FLASH) of the product.
P&E has developed a serial number mechanism to automate this process.
Each time you issue a serialization command in the programming software,
the current serial number is programmed at a specified address. In addition,
the serial number is incremented to the next available serial number and
saved for future serialized programming operations.
The Cyclone for ARM devices adopts this automatic serial number
mechanism for its stand-alone operations.
11.1
Understanding Serialization
The automatic serial number mechanism supports serial numbers from 1 to
16 bytes in length. Each byte of a serial number ranges between a lower and
an upper bound. This approach allows the individual bytes of the serial
number to have distinct properties. Some of the forms these properties can
take are:
Type
Lower Bound (hex)
Upper Bound (hex)
Constant
Constant
Constant
Binary
00
FF
ASCII Printable
20
7E
ASCII Numeric
30
39
ASCII Upper Case Letter
41
5A
ASCII Lower Case Letter
61
7A
Other
XX
YY
Each serial number and its properties are stored in a separate file. Any file
name can be used for the serial number file, however the extension .ser is
normally appended because it makes it simpler locate the file.
A utility called SERIALIZE has been developed to make it easy to create,
visualize, edit, and maintain these serial number files.
