TRACE32® adds debug support for manycore systems

Lauterbach extends its multicore debugging solution to debug chips that include many identical cores. The new catchword is iAMP, which means integrated Asymmetric MultiProcessing.

Manycore systems are a special form of multicore system. They achieve higher parallelism by containing many identical cores which work together or in parallel on the same task. Such systems, which were previously used primarily in the area of high-performance computing, are now increasingly being used for embedded designs.

In the embedded area, manycore systems are usually part of a classic multicore system. TRACE32 iAMP now allows identical, logically coupled cores to be debugged via a single GUI instance. What sounds simple at first is a challenging task. Manycore systems are typically operated by multiple operating systems. Even though there is just one global physical address space, each OS maintains its own set of virtual address spaces. The high art of debugging is now to provide the debugger with the complete details of the operating systems, the MMU translations and all other aspects of the software architecture in such a way, that a seamless debugging of such a manycore system is guaranteed.

TRACE32 iAMP is available for selected core architectures such as Arm®, Qualcomm® Hexagon™ and Infineon AURIX™ TriCore™.

Norbert Weiss, Managing Director of Lauterbach GmbH, says, “Imagine a system of multiple chips accessing shared DDR, each with sixteen independent cores used for AI, a cluster of four application processors and another core responsible for power management. This doesn’t fit any of the traditional multicore debug models, and just as operating systems and compilers are evolving to manage this kind of target, so too must the debug tools. This is why Lauterbach is pleased, once again, to be at the forefront of debug technology and helping our customers get safer systems to market faster.”