Method and apparatus for recording program execution in a microprocessor based integrated circuit

Abstract

An integrated circuit (10) includes a central processing unit (12), an instruction cache (14), a data cache, (16), and a trace recorder. The central processing unit (12) interacts with the instruction cache (14) and the data cache (16) in order to execute instructions. Profile information passed between the central processing unit (12), the instruction cache (14), and the data cache (16) not normally available for external analysis may be captured by the trace recorder (20) in response to various execution points in a program being executed by the central processing unit (12). The profile information captured by the trace recorder (20) may subsequently be provided to external analysis equipment in order to analyze the operation of the central processing unit (12) for study of program execution.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.