Acquiring an exhaustive, continuous and real-time trace from SoCs

Abstract

The amount of time and resources that have to be spent on debugging of embedded cores continuously increases. Approaches valid 10 years ago can no longer be used due to the variety and complexity of peripheral components of SoC solutions that even might consist of multiple heterogeneous cores. Although there are some initiatives to standardize and leverage the embedded debugging capabilities, current debugging solutions only cover a fraction of the problems present in that area. In this contribution we show a new approach for debugging and tracing SoCs. The new approach, called hidICE (hidden ICE), delivers an exhaustive, continuous and real-time trace with much lower system interference compared to state-of-the-art solutions.