Memory footprint optimization

When developing an application, ROM and RAM footprint are important factors, especially when the firmware runs on the most resource-constrained devices like nRF52810 or nRF52811.

To reduce the memory footprint, ensure that your application uses the minimum required resources and tune the nRF Connect SDK configuration parameters. Complete the following actions to optimize your application:

  • Follow the guides for optimizing Zephyr. Also see the implementation of the Minimal footprint sample.

  • Analyze stack usage in each thread of your application by using the Thread analyzer. Reduce the stack sizes where possible.

  • Limit or disable debugging features such as logging or asserts.

  • Go through each component and subsystem and turn off all features that your application does not use.

The following subsections give more information on how to optimize specific subsystems.

Bluetooth

Complete the following actions to optimize the Bluetooth® part of your application:

For reference, you can find minimal footprint configurations of the Bluetooth: Peripheral LBS sample in nrf/samples/bluetooth/peripheral_lbs/minimal.conf and the Bluetooth: Peripheral UART sample in nrf/samples/bluetooth/peripheral_uart/minimal.conf.

Thread

Complete the following actions to optimize the Thread part of your application:

For reference, you can find minimal footprint configurations for the single protocol and multiprotocol variants of the Thread: CLI sample in nrf/samples/openthread/cli/overlay-minimal_*protocol.conf.