10 March 2009

IAR Systems J-Trace For ARM Cortex-M3

IAR Systems, a member of the ARM Connected Community, has demonstrated one of the first dedicated high-speed hardware trace probe for ARM Cortex-M3 cores at Embedded World in Germany earlier this month.

The tool, which is plug-and-play compatible with IAR Embedded Workbench integrated development environment, accelerates debugging because development can be carried out directly on the target hardware, the company explained.

“The new generation of ETM/Trace interfaces provides a new level of efficiency and functionality. These devices differ from conventional JTAG probes because they also offer a real-time trace interface with a buffer memory. Most importantly, they are much more affordable than earlier solutions,” IAR Systems product manager, Anders Lundgren, said.  

IAR J-Trace is easy to use and connects to the PC host running Windows via a USB port, through which it is powered. It also works as a standard JTAG debug probe through a separate JTAG port.

IAR J-Trace combines an embedded trace macrocell (ETM) with an embedded in circuit emulator (ICE) macrocell to deliver all the real-time debug functions of a traditional emulator. It has a 4MB buffer memory. No special hardware is required to substitute for the real microprocessor functions in order to make them visible.

Other features include full integration with the C-SPY debugger, J-TAG speed up to 20MHz and trace speed up to 200MHz