Product category:
Design and Development Hardware
News Release from: Lauterbach | Subject: Trace32
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 19 April 2004
Debuggers see through to Mentor RTOS
Trace32 debuggers from Lauterbach now support the uItron layer uiPlus from Mentor Graphics.
Trace32 debuggers from Lauterbach now support the uItron layer uiPlus from Mentor Graphics Trace32 customers receive the uiPlus awareness for free
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 3 Apr 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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uItron is an interface standard for real-time operating systems.
This standard was developed in Japan and is now growing in acceptance in Europe.
Mentor Graphics developed its Nucleus Plus operating systemwith an interface layer named uiPlus that conforms to the uItron standard.
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Because the objects defined in uItron cannot be mapped one to one to the Nucleus Plus objects, Mentor Graphics extended these objects in the uiPlus layer and implemented new objects.
In lieu of this, Lauterbach has implemented additional uiPlus awareness for the changed and added objects.
Together with the Nucleus Plus awareness, the developer has access to all information, both the Nucleus Plus kernel, and the uiPlus layer.
The uiPlus awareness is able to visualise all RTOS objects.
It provides its own windows for the display of tasks, event flags, semaphores etc.
If the debugger is capable of a dual-port access to the memory, these objects can be displayed nonintrusively, while the application runs in real time.
Trace32 also supports the usage of task related breakpoints.
This means, that, for example, in shared code, a breakpoint only halts, if a specific task hits it.
A built-in stack coverage analysis allows a precise measurement of the stack usage of each task.
Each task's call stack (the context) can also be viewed.
Trace32 analysers are able to do a selective recording of the bus cycles.
In conjunction with these recordings, task switches can be examined and displayed graphically.
A performance analysis evaluates task run times and function run times automatically.
Statistic tables give precise information about the system usage.
A dynamic performance analysis is possible even without a real time trace.
Trace32 periodically detects the running tasks and creates a graph of the usage of the target.
New pull-down menus, adapted to the uiPlus awareness, allow an easy access to the new functionality.
uiPlus and the kernel awareness also runs in the Trace32 Instruction Set Simulator which is available, free of charge, at the Lauterbach homepage.
Thus the Trace32 simulators are suitable for a first prototyping, even if the hardware is not yet available.
None of the features that the Trace32 debugger provides for the uiPlus RTOS needs any changes to the application or kernel, such as patches, hooks or additional instrumentation of the code.
It Lauterbach's philosophy that the Trace32 should work on the exact same application as will later be in the customer's finished product.
This is the only way to fully guarantee that the original application is tested and running correctly.
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