Development software supports new platforms

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Apr 16, 2008

CodeSymphony's JTAG-based debugging provides board bring-up support and kernel-level debug capabilities.

Corelis' CodeSymphony software development and JTAG debug environment has been enhanced to support the new AMCC PowerPC 460EX Canyonlands and 460GT Glacier platforms.

CodeSymphony, an integrated development environment (IDE) based on Eclipse, is included in the AMCC Evaluation Kits for these and other AMCC platforms.

In addition to the usual user-level access and debug features, CodeSymphony's JTAG-based debugging adds board bring-up support and kernel-level debug capabilities.

The Eclipse IDE is very flexible because of its open, extensible plug-in based architecture.

Eclipse provides developers with an advanced embedded tool suite that allows them to build, compile and debug their embedded applications faster than ever before, reducing their time to market for PowerPC 4xx-based systems.

With this IDE, CodeSymphony provides for complete management of a developer's project using a simple graphical user interface.

Developers can set up one or more build environments by specifying the compiler and build options, allowing for quick and easy revisions of their projects.

CodeSymphony includes a pre-built GNU C/C++ cross tool-chain for Linux and Windows.

The tool-chain includes a compiler, linker and debugger, along with other tools configured for PowerPC targets.

Developers use CodeSymphony to step, run, halt and perform other operations to examine and debug their code.

By incorporating the use of Eclipse and GDB, both popular open source applications, the learning curve for developers is greatly diminished.

The basic version of CodeSymphony provides register and memory control functions plus additional features and commands to complement GDB, such as the ability to read special-purpose registers, set hardware breakpoints and other target hardware-specific features.

When upgraded to the JTAG-based version of CodeSymphony, users have access to advanced features including support for board bring-up, partial functionality debug, boot loader debug, kernel-level debug and optional Flash memory programming.

For the AMCC Evaluation Kits, CodeSymphony uses the on-board gdbserver and Ethernet interface to connect to the board.

The user can upgrade CodeSymphony to JTAG emulation by purchasing a USB 2.0 or Ethernet JTAG controller.

This is essential for bringing up new target hardware or when there is no on-board monitor or gdbserver.

To meet the requirements of today's most demanding applications, these controllers use a high-speed boundary-scan controller architecture based on Corelis' Turbo Scan Engine.

Corelis also complements CodeSymphony emulators with ScanExpress JET (JTAG Emulation Test), a suite of on-board functional test tools that leverage the AMCC processors' JTAG port to exercise the surrounding circuitry for at-speed functional testing.