Product category:
Design and Development Software
News Release from: Green Hills Software | Subject: TraceEdge trace enabler
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 30 March 2005
Speedy trace collection from non-trace
processors
A trace enabler is an innovation that brings the benefits of high-speed trace collection to developers using processors without built-in trace support.
Green Hills Software, the technology leader in embedded software development tools and real-time operating systems, has introduced the TraceEdge trace enabler, an innovation that brings the benefits of high-speed trace collection to developers using processors without built-in trace support With the TraceEdge solution, Green Hills Software's SuperTrace probe can collect trace data from nearly all 32-bit and 64-bit processors, even those without integrated trace hardware
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 21 Mar 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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Developers can use this trace history with Green Hills Software's MULTI TimeMachine tools to visualize and replay their software's execution, allowing bugs and inefficiencies to be easily and quickly eliminated.
"Like instant replay during a televised sporting event, the SuperTrace probe and TimeMachine tools let embedded developers capture and replay the exact sequence of events leading up to the appearance of a bug or performance bottleneck".
"This eliminates the need for trial-and-error debugging, saving minutes to days of debugging time for each bug," commented David Kleidermacher, vice president of engineering at Green Hills Software.
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"The SuperTrace probe even captures bugs that can not be reproduced and would otherwise end up in a shipped product".
"With TraceEdge, many more developers can now take advantage of the SuperTrace and TimeMachine combination to dramatically improve their products' reliability and time-to-market." "Time-to-market and reliability are essential to the success of electronic products, including consumer electronics, telecommunications, and networking equipment," said Paul Zorfass, senior analyst for FTI.
"Traditionally, this has forced OEMs to make difficult tradeoff decisions".
"However, with Green Hills Software's trace collection and visualization tools, developers have the potential to dramatically improve their products' reliability while also reducing debugging time." Innovative new approach to trace collection - until now, high-speed trace has only been available with a handful of processors that incorporate both the logic necessary to capture trace data and a specialized port for its retrieval.
The TraceEdge solution eliminates this dependency by minimally instrumenting a system's software so that trace information can be captured by a SuperTrace probe connected to a processor's address bus-with the processor still running at full-speed.
TraceEdge instrumentation is done at the object-code level.
Logging instructions are inserted at strategic locations throughout the target code.
When executed, these instructions write to addresses that are recognized and recorded by the SuperTrace probe.
The sequence of recorded addresses provides a complete execution history.
Instrumenting at the object-code level provides substantial benefits over the traditional approach of source-level instrumentation: * There is minimal impact on run-time performance, making it possible to gather high-speed, real-time trace data.
Just one logging instruction is usually added for every instrumentation point, compared to three or four additional instructions with source-level approaches.
* Instrumentation can be quickly added to production code, without time-consuming recompilation.
* There is no dependency on programming language and source code is not required.
* An entire system can be traced, including application software, libraries, the operating system, and device drivers.
* Trace information can be viewed at both the assembly-code and source-code levels.
High performance - the SuperTrace probe can capture trace data at bus speeds over 300MHz, regardless of core clock rate which can exceed 1GHz.
With 1GB of trace memory, the SuperTrace probe can record 384 million trace points when used on non-trace processors, corresponding to more than 2 billion machine-level instructions.
These provide nearly 77 seconds of execution history on a 25MHz processor and 1.6 seconds of history on a 1.2GHz processor.
Availability - TraceEdge - the TraceEdge solution is available now for PowerPC processors without built-in trace support.
Support for other non-trace processors will be added in the future.
The TraceEdge solution requires a SuperTrace probe for trace recording.
SuperTrace Probe - the SuperTrace probe can be used with TraceEdge for non-trace processors and also supports processors with integrated trace, including the PowerPC 405 and 440; ARM7, ARM9 and ARM10 processors with Embedded Trace Macrocell (ETM); the Freescale MAC7100 family and MPC5554; and the MIPS core-based Toshiba TX4937 and TX4955.
TimeMachine Tools - the TimeMachine tools support trace data captured by the SuperTrace probe; Green Hills Software's instruction set simulators for ARM, MIPS and PowerPC; and the ISIM simulator for the velOSity microkernel and INTEGRITY real-time operating system.
About Green Hills Software - founded in 1982, Green Hills Software is the technology leader for real-time operating systems and software development tools for 32- and 64-bit embedded systems.
Our royalty-free INTEGRITY RTOS, velOSity microkernel, compilers, MULTI and AdaMULTI Integrated Development Environments and TimeMachine debugger offer a complete development solution that addresses both deeply embedded and high-reliability applications. Request a free brochure from Green Hills Software ...
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