|
Sniffing out the bugs
|
04/01/2008
|
| |
Until now, designers of ARM powered systems have been faced with the decision of whether a low cost Jtag debug interface would be sufficient for software development, or whether a more expensive emulator would be required.
There is no doubt that even the most powerful debug interfaces have reached their limits in attempting to support today’s standards, as well as being relatively expensive. For example, whilst considering the increase in execution speed enabled by pipelining and cache memory, a traditional emulator no longer allows monitoring of a processor core or its active program and memory contents. This is because processor clock frequencies have increased rapidly whilst debugger signal extraction is limited to 100MHz.
The new generation of ETM/trace interfaces provides a higher level of efficiency and functionality. These differ from a conventional Jtag probe in that they also offer a real time trace interface with a memory buffer – typically 1 to 2Mbyte – in which the most recent trace information is stored. This can be downloaded to a pc if an error or halt occurs in the program.
|
| |
Author
Thomas Wagner
|
| |
| |
|
This material is protected by Findlay Publications copyright 2008.
See Terms and Conditions.
One-off usage is permitted but bulk copying is not.
For multiple copies contact the sales team.
|
| |
|
| Email this article |
|
|