CEVA and ARM partner to enhance development support of CEVA DSP + ARM multiprocessor SoCs
(Technology News, 10 Jun 2008 )
CEVA, Inc. has partnered with ARM to enable real-time trace support for CEVA DSP cores in ARM CoreSight technology for the development of multiprocessor system-on-chip (SoC) solutions. The enhanced support will enable the growing number of customers deploying CEVA DSP + ARM processor-based SoCs to benefit from full system visibility when using ARM Embedded Trace Macrocell™ (ETM) technology-enabled processors, simplifying the debug process and ensuring faster time-to-market.
Many of today’s complex SoCs for wireless and mobile multimedia applications adopt a multiprocessor architecture to deliver the optimal performance and extensive feature-sets demanded. Such a multiprocessor approach usually means more complex debug of the complete application. With the introduction of CEVA’s Real-Time Trace module, mutual customers can gather traces of software execution on the CEVA DSP cores using ARM ETM technology, ensuring better overall system development and performance.
CEVA chose to adopt the proven technology of the ARM ETM technology and design the DSP to interface directly with it. The CEVA DSP ETM-technology-based interface adapts the unique DSP data and program access characteristics such as dual data bus interfaces and multi predicated program execution to the ETM interface to achieve full DSP visibility with a minimal amount of added logic. CEVA added additional filtering logic to make sure the high data throughput of a typical DSP application will not overflow ETM data traffic. Simultaneous tracing of ARM and CEVA DSP processors can be collected via the CoreSight Trace Funnel through a single trace port.
ARM’s CoreSight technology provides the most complete debug and trace solution for the entire system-on-chip (SoC). It makes ARM processor-based SoCs the easiest to debug and thus speeds development of higher quality products. CoreSight technology builds on the ARM Embedded Trace Macrocell (ETM) products, which are widely licensed and supported by the ARM RealView development tools and more than 20 other leading tool vendors.
