The requirements on tools to support the debugging work flow in embedded systems designs have increased drastically. Analysis shows that every five years we are faced with processors which have doubled their pin count. Looking at...
moreThe requirements on tools to support the debugging work flow in embedded systems designs have increased drastically. Analysis shows that every five years we are faced with processors which have doubled their pin count. Looking at the count of transistors within a chip we find a two year doubling rate (Moors’s Law). This evolution not only brings us Systems on Chip (SoC) devices with an increased complexity but also raises the chance of bugs. Multicore-SoC and the trend to replace hardware by software only serve to increase this phenomenon. Every manufacturer of microcontrollers or SoC devices tries to find a solution to this problem with their own created Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and their specially defined debug interfaces. The user is put in an almost helpless situation, flooded by information on technical advantages and disadvantages of each privileged system. This situation is reinforced by products from software and hardware providers specialized on debugging tools. This thesis researches the present hardware and software debug concepts, their key features and preferred areas of application. The work shows a path through the forest of debug concepts and may help designers to make their system decision more assured.
