Hi

It is not unusual to see MCU PLL’s up in the “nanosecond” range 
in terms of jitter. Finding one that is below 200 ps was pretty much
impossible last time I dug into them.

Bob

> On May 6, 2021, at 8:39 AM, Pluess, Tobias <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Good to know that they offer the Spread Spectrum functionality.
> But as I see, the function is switched off by default.
> And it still does not explain why the F303 had the issue with the frequency
> modulated CPU clock.
> But as far as I understand, I can use the PLL without any issues, as long
> as the spread spectrum feature is switched off.
> It would still be interesting to see how much jitter the PLL adds to the
> OCXO's one.
> 
> Tobias
> HB9FSX
> 
> 
> On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 12:45 PM Detlef Schuecker via time-nuts <
> [email protected]> wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> yes, the STM32F4xx series has the spread spectrum feature, the STM32F3xx
>> does not.
>> See the RCC_SSCGR (reset and control clock spread spectrum clock
>> generation register), Bit 31 in
>> dm00031020-stm32f405-415-stm32f407-417-stm32f427-437-and-stm32f429-439-advanced-arm-based-32-bit-mcus-stmicroelectronics.pdf,
>> 
>> catchy names :)).
>> 
>> But the STM32 are real fine machines imho..
>> 
>> Cheers
>> Detlef
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Von:    "Lux, Jim" <[email protected]>
>> An:     [email protected]
>> Datum:  05.05.2021 22:21
>> Betreff:        [time-nuts] Re: The amazing $5 timestamper, part 2:
>> discovering a bug in my signal generator
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 5/5/21 12:57 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
>>> --------
>>> Pluess, Tobias writes:
>>> 
>>>> In my very first GPSDO I built, I used a STM32F303. This one had a
>> quite
>>>> bad PLL stability, the frequency was varying over time in a sawtooth
>> like
>>>> manner for some reason.
>>> It's called "spread-spectrum" and is done deliberately to game the EMI
>>> criteria for various certifications.
>>> 
>>> By sweeping the frequency through a range, the peak energy of any one
>>> frequency, as averaged over a second, drops correspondingly.
>>> 
>>> In many cases you can actually disable it, but you may have to punk the
>>> manufacturer quite hard to find out what bit to set or clear.
>>> 
>> 
>> https://www.st.com/resource/en/application_note/dm00281138-stm32-mcus-spreadspectrum-clock-generation-principles-properties-and-implementation-stmicroelectronics.pdf
>> 
>> 
>> Says the STM32F2, F4, F7, but not the F3. But it might be similar.
>> 
>> You could look at the register map of the F3 for MODPER, INCSTEP,
>> SPREADSEL, SSCGEN ?
>> 
>> A casual grep didn't find it.
>> 
>> There's also a scheme in another ap note about going in and changing the
>> PLL fractional divider every millisecond using software. (I guess that's
>> if you fail your radiated emissions test, and you're desperate?)
>> _______________________________________________
>> time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] -- To unsubscribe send
>> an email to [email protected]
>> To unsubscribe, go to and follow the instructions there.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] -- To unsubscribe send
>> an email to [email protected]
>> To unsubscribe, go to and follow the instructions there.
>> 
> _______________________________________________
> time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] -- To unsubscribe send an 
> email to [email protected]
> To unsubscribe, go to and follow the instructions there.
_______________________________________________
time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] -- To unsubscribe send an 
email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe, go to and follow the instructions there.

Reply via email to