Mechanism for storing and extracting trace information using internal memory in micro controllers
AssigneeAtmel Corporation
InventorsFrode Milch Pedersen, Are Arseth
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Abstract
This document relates to apparatus and methods to store and retrieve trace information in on-chip system memory of microcontrollers. A microcontroller comprises a microprocessor and a memory device accessible through a data bus and an address bus coupled to the microprocessor. The microcontroller includes on-chip debug logic coupled to the microprocessor. Trace data can be retrieved from system memory using a debug port of the debug logic. A system in accordance with the present invention will lower the cost of implementation of trace features in microcontrollers, and strongly reduce the cost of supporting such features in debug tools.
Claims20
A microcontroller comprising:
- a microprocessor formed on a chip;
- system memory coupled to the microprocessor using a data bus, the system memory including a trace buffer;
- on-chip debug logic coupled to the microprocessor and the system memory, the on-chip debug logic including a debug port;
- and
- a trace extractor module configured to store trace data in the trace buffer of the system memory, and to retrieve the trace data to the debug port.
A method comprising:
- reading and writing microcontroller data to a shared memory device using a microprocessor of a microcontroller;
- executing a trace capture sequence using on-chip debug logic of the microcontroller, wherein executing a trace capture sequence includes:
- accumulating trace frames into a frame register;
- and
- providing the contents of the frame register to the shared memory device when the frame register is full;
- and
- reading trace frames from the shared memory device using a debug port.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.