Product category:
Design and Development Hardware
News Release from: Lauterbach | Subject: Trace32
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 09 April 2003
Debugger gains awareness of operating
system
Microprocessor development tools from Lauterbach now provide kernel awareness for the Windows CE.net operating system from Microsoft.
Microprocessor development tools from Lauterbach now provide kernel awareness for the Windows CE.net operating system from Microsoft The Lauterbach Trace32 debugger is now capable of visualising the OS resources (such as process tables) and allows debugging of kernel, drivers, processes and DLLs
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 3 Apr 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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If the user adds the optional trace module, they can then execute real-time performance analysis at the threads level.
This extra functionality is included as a free option for all new users of Trace32 and existing users can also upgrade at zero cost providing they are within the software maintenance period of their contract.
The Trace32 family consists of three main categories of hardware debuggers: JTAG debug systems, JTAG debuggers with trace (where supported by the microprocessor) and full blown in-circuit emulators.
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Debugger takes on uprated MCU family
Lauterbach is supporting the newly announced HCS08 microprocessor family from Motorola with Trace32-PowerTools.
Between them they provide debug capability for over 600 different microprocessor types all using the same user interface.
When the processor has an MMU the debugger provides full support and debug capability through the MMU.
The flexibility of the software allows easy integration of RTOS awareness and Windows CE.net is the latest addition to the range of over 20 supported RTOSs.
Windows CE is delivered with "Platform Builder", that provides an IDE to configure and generate Windows CE applications.
The platform builder also contains a debugger.
However, this debugger has some limitations in that it needs a running target and cannot debug real time critical sections, such as interrupt routines.
Trace32 completes this debug capability.
Trace32 is able to debug the boot sequence right from the first instruction and then can provide real time debug for drivers, processes and DLLs.
To provide this capability in a system using virtual memory management the debugger has to know and follow all the details of the as it OS administers and changes the processor MMU Lauterbach has developed this "Windows CE awareness" on the Trace32 to be available first on the ARM and XScale architectures with other major architectures to follow shortly.
The developer can observe the current running processes even on minimal Windows CE systems that are built without debug stubs or a command shell.
By using the highly sophisticated MMU support provided by Trace32 the user can access the whole virtual and physical address range at any time.
This means users are able to debug bootstrap, kernel, drivers and application-oriented processes all at the same time.
In the same way users can debug several processes simultaneously which can be especially useful in testing interprocess communications.
If the application is based on a core with tracing capability such as ARM ETM, the Trace32 records selected processor cycles and from this data thread switches can be followed in detail and graphically displayed.
Thread and function run times are accurately time stamped for performance analysis and the system load statistics can be displayed in tabular and graphical formats.
All the features described are provided without any changes to the code such as patches, hooks or additional code instrumentation.
The Trace32 philosophy is to work on code identical to that used in the final application.
This is the only way to guarantee, 100%, that the code will run in the final application with exactly the same performance as when it was tested.
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