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New Technical Paper: Slow Run: Features and Benefits

iSYSTEM has published a new technical article describing the features and benefits of Slow Run mode.

Slow Run allows the capture of the complete program execution and data trace – although the MCU does not provide a debug trace port. Slow Run mode is not a substitute for powerful MCUs with trace ports and according debuggers, but it shows every developer the insights of the complete application’s execution, where without Slow Run mode only teeny-weeny details are visible.

Why is Slow Run Mode an important feature? Read more...

 

iSYSTEMTechBlog: Must your application react on ECC corruption?

Do you have an application that needs to detect and react on ECC corruption? If yes, how do you test  and verify your application's behaviour?

Basics:
ECC stands for Error Correcting Code and is used for error corrections e.g. on memory that must be free of single bit errors. ECC can correct one-bit errors and detect 2-bit errors. ECC needs on 32 bit 7 check bits and on 64 bits 8 check bits.

Now let's assume your embedded application stores e.g. electrocardiogramm data in memory (with ECC) and writes it later to disk. If there is an error, your application needs to react because data diversification can't be tolerated.

But how can you test such a scenario? ECC errors occur very seldom, sometimes there is no error for years - so how can you verify your application's behaviour?

iSYSTEM has a solution. Since winIDEA 9.12.19 you can induce ECC corruption manually using Hardware/Tools/Memory dialog.

In the dialog you set the address and size of memory to corrupt.

Please note that if this is done indiscriminately, the device can be rendered permanently unusable. Currently supported devices are MPC5xxx.

iSYSTEMTechBlog: Slow Run Mode supports now Profiling

In winIDEA 9.12.7 iSYSTEM introduced the Slow Run mode that allows the acquisition of a complete program trace - also on CPUs without trace port.

Since winIDEA 9.12.14 in addition to program execution, data flow and code coverage analysis Slow Run mode supports also profiling. Profiling analyses when and how long a function is running and provides statistics on many different parameters e.g.

• count (how often was the function called)
• period (what is the time difference between calls to a function)
• net time (time spent in function without subroutines and interrupts)
• gross time (time spent in function including subroutines, but without interrupts)
• call time (time spent in function including subroutines and interrupts)

Below picture shows a Slow Run trace made over a JTAG interface and the output of winIDEA's profiler and code coverage (CC) analysis. The trace includes the complete program and data flow, although JTAG does not provide a trace port and without Slow Run mode all windows would be empty or - in case of CC - would show not covered.

iSYSTEMTechBlog: New "Hot Attach" Options in winIDEA 9.12.4

Hot Attach is a feature available for a long time. "Hot attach" allows the attachment of a debugger to a running target system without affecting its operation.

To "hot attach" an iSYSTEM debugger (iC3000, iC5000) following steps are executed in winIDEA:

• Check in "Hardware/ Emulation Options/ Hardware" tab the "Hot attach to target" option
• Execute "Download" command from "Debug" menu.
• Connect the debug cable to the target system.
• Select the "Attach" debug command from "Debug" menu to attach to the target system.

Now the debugger should display "Run" status and the application can be stopped and debugged if necessary.

To disconnect from the target application select "Detach" command from the "Debug" menu.

Since winIDEA 9.12.4 (release date 15.2.2012)  upon "Debug/Download" winIDEA can optionally disable "Hot Attach" and perform a regular download.

The location for this setting is: "Debug/ Files for Download/ Options" tab

• Initialize debugger, load symbols: This is the default setting for hot attach
• Initialize, attach to CPU, download code: This new option performs a regular download, bypassing hot attach configuration. After download hot attach capabilities are restored.

 

 

 

 

iSYSTEMTechBlog: winIDEAs Multitasking RTOS Support

In a multitaksing operating system (OS) the scheduler is the responsible for switching between tasks. Typically a task will only run for a few milliseconds, then the scheduler deactivates the task and activates another to allow the illusion of parallelism.

On deactivation, the task's current context (registers content, program pointer, stack pointer, etc.) is stored in a control structure - the "Task Control Block " (TCB) - and the next task's TCB is loaded. The currently active task is stored in a global OS variable which usually points to the task's TCB.

For execution profiling (analysis when and how long a task runs) winIDEA needs to keep track of task switches. The easiest way to achieve that is data profiling the global OS variable that stores the active task pointer.

To setup winIDEA for task profiling select in "Profiler Configuration" profile "Code" and "Data" and specify in the "Profiler Data Area" the name of the global variable.

If the CPU does not provide data trace, the value of this variable must be signaled using instrumentation trace. Another mechanism is to use pre/post task hooks which will be called on every task switch.

For more information see ProfilerConcepts.pdf and Analyzer.pdf installed with winIDEA (open menu "Help -Technical Notes").  

iSYSTEMTechBlog: Slow Run - Collect Trace Info on CPUs without Trace Port!

winIDEA build 9.12.7 introduced a new feature - the "Slow Run" mode. Slow Run allows the acquisition of a full program trace - also on CPUs without a trace port!

How is that realized?

In Slow Run mode winIDEA executes the target application at one instruction at a time, which is similar to single step mode. After every step address and data information is retrieved. From that the trace information is collected that is used by the analyzer to display trace and code coverage information.

The high load necessary to collect and calculate all that info, takes up time why this mode is called "Slow Run". Although the analyzer will advance the time stamp for every instruction by 1ns, the effective rate is ~30 instructions per second - depending on the architecture used.

To set winIDEA to slow run mode, check Debug menu "Use Slow Run". Per default it is set to "off".

 

iSYSTEMTechBlog: Incremental Flash Programming on MPC5xxx and TriCore

Since build 9.12.4 winIDEA supports incremental flash programming to speed up download times when only small changes are performed!

When a download is performed into an already programmed device, (optionally) only the FLASH sectors which have been modified, are programmed.

To set this option, select Hardware/eEmulations Options.../CPU/CPU Setup.../Debugging and check the option "Program only modified FLASH sectors".

iSYSTEMTechBlog: Trigger your Trace with any I/O Signal

Do you know how to use any digital or analog signal to trigger your trace?All you need is an iC5000 on-chip debugger with an I/O module!

Connect the signal you like to trigger on to one of the input lines (digital in, analog in) of the I/O module. Configure those lines in winIDEA Hardware/Options/I/O tab.

Next step is to configure an appropriate trace trigger.

• Open the "Analyzer Configuration List".
• Press the "New" "Trace" button.
• Give it desciptive name e.g. "StartTraceOnButtonPress".
• Select the I/O module tab.
• Check the "Trigger".
• Specify the signal to start the trace with.
  • If you use a digital signal, two combinations of digital inputs can be defined - mask 1 and mask 2. The trigger will be generated if either mask1 or mask 2 match. Within a mask, all checked signals must match the high/low configuration.
  • If you use an analog trigger, the trigger is generated if the measured voltage is lower/higher that the specified threshold. 
• To specify the trace content use the "Wizard" button at the bottom or set it manually in the "Trigger" tab.

That's all!

Find further information in iC5000 I/O module.pdf

iSYSTEMTechBlog: How to track an external signal with iC5000's IO Module ?

With iC5000's IO module you can measure digital and analog signals as well as drive them. winIDEA can display these signals in the analyzer so that you can see the signals tracked by the IO module in correlation to your application's program/data trace and also profiler measurements .

The IO module provides:

• one system port
• 8 channels digital in
• 8 channels digital out
• 2 channels analog in
• 2 channels analog out
• power measurement

How do you configure winIDEA for the IO module (IOM) ?

First step is to physically connect the signal to one of the input ports, e.g. digital in port 3. Please make sure not to exceed the specified input and output range of the IOM signal interface. All details to the hardware physics can be found in the IOModule.pdf in the winIDEA documentation directory (in winIDEA menu "Help/Technical Notes").

Next configure the IOM in winIDEA in menu "Hardware/Options/I/O tab". Check the "Show" box in front of the signal you use, e.g. DIN3. You can also specify another name for the signal, e.g. "ButtonPress".

To display a graph of external signals in  profiler's timeline view select "Show AUX".

This will open the AUX window that shows for every external signal a graph plus values. 

In the screenshots the setup for power measurement and its output is also visible.

 

iSYSTEM exhibits on embedded world 2012

iSYSTEM exhibits on embedded world 2012 fair in Nuremberg (2/28/2012 - 3/1/2012).

We will show our customers:

• The new iC5000 I/O module that enhances iSYSTEM debug tools by a mini HIL component that allows you to measure the power consumption of your hardware and track it down to function level!
• iSYSTEM's realtime unit test tool testIDEA that is now available in standard and professional version offering many new features, e.g.
  • Execution of test cases without code instrumentation
  • Generation of new test cases with Excel!
• fitIDEA - iSYSTEM's answer to functional safety standards like e.g. ISO26262

Visit us on the embedded world 2012 exhibition in booth 4-505 in exhibition hall 4 and get informed!

winIDEA 2011 Final Release Build is 9.11.80

Today iSYSTEM released winIDEA 2011 build 9.11.80 as the final release build of winIDEA 2011. The download ist available here .

The major enhancement of winIDEA 2011 is the supertrace - a complete redesign of the analyzer to combine the features of trace, profiler and statistics analysis in one session. With supertrace all analyzers are based on a single trace so that a single run is sufficient to retrieve all relevant data.

winIDEA 2011 also includes the standard version of testIDEA - iSYSTEM's real-time unit test tool that allows creation and execution of unit tests without code instrumentation.

Many extensions to isystem.connect have been included in winIDEA 2011 to optimally assist iC5000 and testIDEA. Remote control of winIDEA (and iC5000) in a mini-HIL environment or in a test scenario can be easily achieved. Testers can run scripts manually and also automatically to verify the embedded application.

For a complete list of all winIDEA 2011 features see Release Notes Overview . The detailed feature description is included in All winIDEA 2011 Release Notes .
Features of testIDEA are described in testIDEA 2011 Release Notes .

With this release winIDEA 2011 feature development is finalized. In the future there will be only hotfix builds for winIDEA 2011.
iSYSTEM already started further development in the new winIDEA 2012 development version.

iSYSTEMTechBlog: Increase your Analyzer's Performance

Are you recording lots of data to get an insight in the real-time workings of your application? Does it slow down the overall performance of your PC?

Then you may consider following:

Analyzer recordings can be very large. The raw compressed recording itself can be several GB large, after decompression and analysis, the temporary data footprint can increase by a factor of 30-100.

Most of this data is kept on disk in the designated temporay folder. If this folder is located on a slow disk, the overall performance suffers.
If you have another disk with better performance available, set the environment variable ISYSTEM_TEMP to a folder on that disk.We also recommend to defragment this disk.

If you are still struggling with performance problems, consider that profiler and coverage analysis are parallelized. So these can take advantage of a multi-core PC to increase the overall processing performance.

We recommend following system configuration:

• 4-8 core CPU
• 8GB or more RAM
• 100GB free space on TEMP drive. The drive should be defragmented.

iSYSTEMTechBlog: Special Function Register Enhancements

Since winIDEA 9.11.77 the Special Function Register (SFR) Window has been enhanced to show:

• the address for the SFR
• the bit position and size for sub-SFRs (in beside picture you see O for offset and S for size)
• a radix prefix for the SFR value (0x for hexadecimal, 0b for binary values).

What are Special Function Registers (SFRs)?
SFRs are special on-chip CPUs registers that control various functions of a microcontroller, e.g. stack pointer, program counter.

To open the SFR window in winIDEA, you select "Special Function Registers..." command from winIDEA's View menu or click on the SFR window icon in the view toolbar.

The SFR window organizes CPU registers hierarchically into groups and sub groups and registers and sub registers. A group is a collection of registers that serve a module on the CPU e.g. serial port, a register corresponds to a CPU's Special Function Register.

iSYSTEMTechBlog: Profiler Configuration changes

Since winIDEA build 9.11.76 the configuration window of the profiler has completely changed.

• One major change is that there are no longer tabs for Code and Data Areas. Code and Data areas are now visible in the bottom half of the configuration window.
• If function profiling is enabled then all functions will be profiled if no functions are listed in the code areas list.
• There is now a leading check box for every function listed in the profiler data area. By clearing this check box profiler areas can be temporarily disabled. The new configuration will take effect in the next profiler session.
• Less frequently used options e.g. "Ignore functions which exit on entry" have been moved to "Advanced..." configuration.
• Tail-merge analysis is enabled by default now. It can be disabled/enabled in Profiler/Advanced options.
• If tail-merging is used, functions that are tail merge destinations (or stack killers) are now included implicitly but not shown if any of the explicitly specified functions use them.

 

iSYSTEMTechBlog: Floating Point compare Precision adjustable

Since winIDEA build 9.11.69 the precision of floating point comparisons is adjustable.

When would that affect you? Well, every time you calculate with floating point numbers...

A floating point number is represented in a computer by several significant digits used for the number and an exponent, both in binary format. A definite dezimal number e.g. 0,1 can have an indefinite periodic binary representation e.g. 0,0001100110011. In a computer only the first digits of that periodic number are stored which may lead to inaccurateness in calculations, e.g.  will 10*0,1 in a computer result in 1,0? Well, it depends on the implementation...

Modern computers have additional to the main CPU (e.g. using 64 bits) a floating point unit (FPU e.g. using 80 bits). Assume you assign x=y=1; and compare cos(x) == cos(y); It can happen that this comparison is not true if cos(x) has been buffered (in memory 64 bit and therefore rounded) while cos(y) has been processed directly from the FPU (80 bit and was not rounded).

To solve this dilemma you can set the tolerable error due to rounding in floating point arithmetic - the so called machine epsilon. When you calculate the absolute error of a floating point comparison, it must be smaller or equal to epsilon (float x, y;): 
(x-y)<=epsilon

Since winIDEA build 9.11.69 you can now set the value for Floating point compare precision in menu Debug/ Debug Options/ Symbols.