Specifications

7
As of March 2011, TRACE32 trace information can
be streamed to a host hard-disk from the running
target. The large amount of program flow data
which can result from this method, leads to a sig-
nificant simplification of the code-coverage.
Trace-based Code-Coverage
Proof of statement coverage and condition coverage is
often required to meet system quality specifications in
industries such as medical and automotive.
•Statement coverage proves that each line of code
was executed during the system test.
• Condition coverage proves that for each condi-
tional instruction both pass and fail branches were
executed at least once.
For many embedded systems highly optimized code
must be tested in real-time. The alternatives of code
instrumentation and non-real-time operation cannot
be used in these cases.
To be able to meet these requirements, the target pro-
cessor/SoC must fulfill the following prerequisites:
1. The cores which are implemented must have a core
tracelogic(seegure8).Thislogicgeneratesinfor-
mation about the instructions executed by the core.
Depending on the operation of the trace logic, infor-
mation about the task switches and the read/write
operations can also appear.
2. The processor/SoC must have a trace port with suf-
ficient bandwidth so that the trace information can
be recorded by an external tool without any informa-
tion loss.
The Classic Measurement Process
Until now, code-coverage analysis was performed with
TRACE32 using the following steps:
1. Start program execution and automatically stop
when the trace memory is full.
2. Transfer the trace memory content to the code-
coverage database.
3. Continue program execution.
For each measurement step, the amount of data col-
lected was limited by the size of the memory available
within the trace tool. The results of the code-coverage-
analysis could be checked after the total measurement
was completed or, if needed, after each intermediate
step.
New: Streaming
If the trace data is transferred to a drive on the host
computer at the time of recording, the complete soft-
ware routine can be recorded in one measurement
step. The streamed data is stored within a file on the
hard-disk. To avoid completely filling the hard-disk with
trace data, TRACE32 stops streaming as soon as less
than 1 GByte of free memory remains.
To be able to stream, the following technical prerequi-
sites must be fulfilled:
• 64-bit host computer and 64-bit TRACE32 execut-
able
• Interface between trace tool and host computer
must be as fast as possible.
• Optimal conguration of the trace source and the
trace tool
TRACE32 PowerView
64-bit host
SoC
Trace port JTAG
Trace
control
logic
Trace memory
as FIFO
File on
hard-disk
Core
trace
logic
Core
Fig.8: Forthecode-coverageanalysis,upto1TByteoftracedatacanbestreamedtothehostcomputer.
Code-Coverage – Simplified