Firmware problems AI can catch
These are the bugs that ship because generic tools don't know they exist. Each one has caused real field failures in production firmware.
DMA Cache Coherency
DMA writes to memory while the CPU reads from stale cache. Data looks correct in the debugger but fails at runtime. Intermittent CRC failures nobody can explain.
HardFault Debugging
The default hardfault handler is while(1). It tells you nothing. Reading the fault status registers gives you the exact instruction, memory address, and fault type.
RTOS Stack Overflow
You picked your stack sizes by guessing. So did everyone. When a task overflows its stack, it silently corrupts adjacent memory. No fault, no warning, just mysterious behavior days later.
Volatile Misuse
volatile prevents compiler reordering but provides zero atomicity guarantees. Shared variables between ISR and main need PRIMASK or C11 atomics, not just the volatile keyword.
Clock Tree Misconfiguration
PLL output through bus prescalers to peripheral clock. One wrong divider and SPI runs at half speed, UART baud rate is off by 3%, or ADC sampling violates Nyquist.
OTA Update Bricking
85% of embedded devs say OTA is must-have but it's the easiest way to brick devices. Power loss mid-write, signature validation gaps, fallback partition corruption.
I2C Debugging
I2C looks simple until the bus hangs and no amount of resets fixes it. Clock stretching violations, address conflicts, and pull-up resistor issues that only show up at temperature.
Watchdog Silent Reset
The watchdog fires, the device resets, and the reset reason register is the only evidence. If nobody reads RCC->CSR (or equivalent) before it's cleared, the event never happened.