An embedded multi-resolution AMBA trace analyzer for microprocessor-based SoC integration

Abstract

The bus tracing is used to catch related signals for further investigation and analysis. However, the trace size of cycleaccurate tracing is large and the trace cycle is shallow unless using a proper compression mechanism. In this paper, we propose an embedded multi-resolution AMBA trace analyzer that provides the trade-off between the trace granularity and the trace depth. It consists of two major trace approaches: (1) the signal monitor/tracing which provides the levels of abstraction, and (2) the trace reduction. In the first approach, it allows designers to zoom-in/out to preferred level of abstraction to serve different debugging purposes. In the second approach, the trace analyzer compresses the traced data according to signal characteristics and the cost of on-chip storage is reduced. The trace data will be decompressed on the host for further observation and debugging. The experimental results show that the proposed approach can reach a good compression ratio of 96% and the trace depth is more than two thousand cycles at the higher abstraction level.

An AHB on Chip Bus Tracer with Real Time Compression for SoC Support

“…The trace captured before the target point is reached is referred as backward trace and similarly the trace captured after the target point is reached is referred to as forward trace. Since the initial state of the trace which is currently under compression the real time compression of the backward trace in a circular is difficult to achieve [7].…”

Hardware-based data value and address trace filtering techniques

“…Such solutions would be impractical and cost-prohibitive for realtime tracing. Several proposals address reduction of trace messages captured on SOCs buses, but they provide fairly limited compression ratios [11]. Whereas several academic proposals have addressed real-time hardware-based compression of program execution traces [12][13][14], the more challenging problem of realtime hardware-based reduction of data address and value traces has not been directly addressed so far.…”