Design-for-debug in hardware/software co-design

Abstract

The increasing complexity of hardware/software systems is handled effectively by hardware/software codesign methods. However, the debugging of hardware/software systems is still a very troublesome process. This is mainly due to the limited accessibility to the internals of embedded hardware/software systems. Debugging is also hindered by the nature of the design errors encountered during hardware/software debugging. We present a structured design-for-debug strategy to address the problems of hardware/software debugging. Our design-for-debug strategy is an integral part of hardware/software codesign. Furthermore, we re-use the hardware design-for-test-facilities to reduce the overhead costs of design-for-debug. Two examples are provided to illustrate our design-for-debug strategy.