Flash Usage on Raspberry Pi Pico

[Steven Su]

Hello,

I read the documentation for the Raspberry Pi Pico and it appears that in the C/C++ SDK, there is an option to load programs to RAM to avoid writing to flash during development. (See question "Can I make my code run from RAM?" on the Pi Pico FAQ)

In Thonny, I noticed that programs can be saved to the Pi Pico flash storage, or to the local computer. Does saving the program to the local computer achieve a similar effect as running code from RAM? (in other words, can I reduce writes to the flash storage on the Pico by saving to local drive but still run the program on the Pico?)

Thank you very much.

[Steven Su]

Edit: I did some investigation myself and it seems like saving the program to local file does save writes on flash by loading the entire program into memory. I used the gc library to check free memory and artificially increased the program size with print statements. Memory available decreased as I made the program larger so it seems like the behavior is what I wanted.

[Aivar Annamaa]

Hi!

When you run a script in Thonny, be it on local disk or on Pico, Thonny makes soft reboot in raw mode (ie without running main.py) and sends editor content to MicroPython REPL. I believe soft reboot does read something from flash, but submitting code to the REPL shouldn't.

If you want more confidence or more details, then I recommend asking at MicroPython forum.

Best regards,
Aivar