MIPS SysProbe SP55ET High Performance Trace Probe for MIPS 32-bit and 64-bit Cores
MIPS SysProbe SP55ET is the second device in the SysProbe family and adds support for off-chip iFlowTrace capture and target current monitoring.
By taking advantage of advanced on-chip debug and optional trace features in MIPS IP cores, the SysProbe SP55E allows fast and efficient debug without requiring an intrusive software monitor or additional target I/O resources.
The SysProbe SP55ET provides a full debugging feature set including software and hardware breakpoints, hardware triggers, reset control, power monitoring, code profiling and much more. These features provide the tools that meet the needs of today’s cutting edge development teams for first silicon bring-up, hardware and software development, debug and verification activities.
The trace interface on SysProbe SP55ET can capture 8MiB/s to its dedicated 4MB buffer in one-shot or circular modes, or the trace data can be streamed across a high speed Gigabit Ethernet link to the host PC for infinite capture lengths.
Current monitoring provides a technique for correlating code execution with current flow on your target. Two channels can be monitored at the same time. Time-stamping enables a comparison to be drawn between current used on each channel and the code being executed at that time to identify power hungry code sequences.
The SysProbe SP55ET typically connects to the target system using a 14-pin connector for JTAG and 10-pin connector for iFlowTrace but it has the flexibility to adapt to different debug connectors and protocols via pluggable interface modules.
The debugging software is cross-platform and runs on Windows®, Linux®, or OS X® computers, communicating via USB 2.0 or Gigabit Ethernet.
Designed for a multi-cluster multi-core future
Today’s ever more complex chips present new debug challenges with System-on-Chip (SoC) systems comprising multiple IP designs containing many clusters of many cores and multi-threading capabilities. The SysProbe SP55ET supports the latest MIPS On-Chip Instrumentation (OCI) debug architecture and offers simultaneous debug of heterogeneous designs (CPU, RPU and GPU) within a single SoC.
Trace Features
- Low pin count trace: four data and one clock for pin limited devices.
- 4-bit 100MHz DDR Data Capture interface.
- 4MB dedicated buffer for one-shot and circular data captures.
- Continuous trace data streaming via high speed Gigabit Ethernet link for infinite trace data capture.
- Dual channel target current monitoring using high-precision ADCs for correlation of power consumption with program execution.
- Pluggable interface module to allow for future expansion.
- PC execution trace, load/store address, and load/store data trace supported if configured in the core.
- Trace can be gated on and off by hardware breakpoint triggers.
- Supports filtered trace to capture only function call-returns, hardware execution, or data triggers in the trace, and optionally up to four performance counters (when supported by the core).
Debug Features
- Support for all MIPS cores and other MIPS IP including:
- Warrior cores including P-class (P56xx), M-class (M51xx) and I-class (I64xx) cores.
- proAptiv, interAptiv, and microAptiv cores.
- MIPS32 classic cores including: M4K, 4K, 4KE, 24K, 24KE, 34K,74K,1004K and 1074K.
- Ensigma RPU Series 3, 4 and 5 MCP Cores.
- Embedded Controller (Meta) within Graphics and Video IP cores.
- Simultaneous debug of multi-core, multi-threaded heterogeneous designs.
- Auto-detection of cores and bus topology.
- Unlimited software breakpoints.
- Code and data hardware breakpoints supported.
- Single step by assembly or C/C++ source line.
- Program counter (PC) sampling for zero-overhead code profiling (when supported by the core).
- Go, halt, single-step processor run control.
- Low-level access to JTAG functions for silicon verification.
- Comes with Codescape Console, a Python based command-line debugger. Easy to create scripts, utilities, regression tests etc.
Codescape Console command line interface
MIPS supplies an advanced scripting and command-line console, Codescape Console, which enables direct access to the SysProbe SP55ET from the host PC without using the Codescape Debugger user interface. This provides an ultra-low-level, non-intrusive, scripting layer that is ideal for target bring-up. It allows performance of tasks such as reading and writing memory and registers, or manually controlling JTAG signals, with a predictable impact on the target. Trace configuration and data capture is fully supported in Codescape Console which is based on the popular Python programming language and is fully configurable and expandable. It can be used interactively or can be scripted so you can build powerful scripts that run from the probe to automate trace data capture, perform analysis, and report results.
Source-level debug and trace
For source-level debug and trace analysis with a rich GUI, the Sysprobe SP55ET is tightly coupled with Codescape Debugger. Codescape Debugger is included with Codescape SDK Professional, MIPS bespoke software development and debug environment. Codescape Debugger provides a number of viewing regions and options to organize display of the code execution and target system information. Regions include: Source code, Disassembly, Call Stack, Local and Watch variables, CPU and Peripheral registers, Memory, Breakpoints, Hardware triggers, Trace, Instruction and Data Caches, and console I/O, among others.
The windowed environment is designed to maximize developer productivity for faster results and ease of use. Codescape Debugger also includes advanced features such as RTOS awareness and Linux task debugging.
The Trace regions in Codescape Debugger offer event vs time views and can be linked to dissasembly and source regions to allow ‘replayed’ stepping both forward and backwards through program execution. RTOS trace views are available for Thread-X, FreeRTOS and MEOS which displays processes, thread execution order and duration of an instrumented OS.
Host Requirement:
X86 PC with minimum 8 GB memory
Windows® 7 or later (64-bit)
Red Hat RHEL 6 (64-bit)
Mac® OS X®