American Arium announced a new version of its SourcePoint debugging software for ARM's CoreSight environment. The Linux-aware SourcePoint 6.6 debugger supports traces on multiple Embedded Trace Macrocells (ETMs), and can debug targets incorporating heterogeneous ARM processors, says Arium.

The new multiprocessor support in SourcePoint 6.6 is designed to ease the complexity of debugging the growing number of designs with multiple processors, says the company. Presumably, Arium is referring to as-yet unannounced SoCs based on ARM's multi-core ready Cortex A9 processor core.

SourcePoint 6.6 supports ARM7, ARM9, ARM11, and Cortex cores. It works with Arium's HS-1000S and GT-1000D ETM trace port analyzers, as well as the entry-level LC-500 JTAG emulator pictured below. The HS-1000S provides a 256MB ETM trace depth with a 680 MS/s trace capture rate, says the company, and the GT-1000D offers a 640 MS/s trace capture rate and a 1GB trace buffer.

LC-500 JTAG emulator
(Click for details)

With SourcePoint 6.6, trace can now be gathered on targets supporting multiple ETMs, says Arium, including those with different architectures such as ARM11 and Cortex. According to ARM, ETMs are on-chip debugger interfaces that “allow information on the processor's state to be captured, both before and after a specific event, while adding no burden to the processor's performance.”

The combination of SourcePoint and Arium's trace analyzers and JTAG emulators enables real-time debugging with all core frequencies, says Arium. The products are said to work with popular compiler tool chains and support industry-standard input file formats. Linux-specific support includes symbolic, source-level debugging of Linux kernel code (including loadable modules), and applications such as shared libraries. Arium also touts its support for kernel debug straight out of reset, dynamic debug of loaded Linux modules, and Linux console output through the JTAG port.

Arium first added ARM11 ETM support in SourcePoint 6.3 in 2006. In January 2007, the company introduced SourcePoint 6.3.1, which added improved multi-threaded application debugging under Linux, a new project wizard, and faster load speed times for XScale processors.

Availability

SourcePoint 6.6 is available now for Arium debug hardware customers, says the company.

 
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