Non-Intrusive Trace
When debugging software on many occasions the side effects of a bug is apparent but its root cause is located much earlier in the program execution. ARM CoreSight™ ETM and PTM, supported by DS-5 Debugger, provide non-intrusive program trace that allow developers to review instructions (and the associated source code) as they have occurred. It also offers developers the ability to debug time-sensitive issues otherwise not picked up with intrusive conventional stepping techniques. DS-5 Debugger uses DSTREAM to capture trace into its 4 GB buffer.
Flexible Trace Visualization
Trace is a valuable tool for debugging and short-time performance analysis. However, there is little developers can do with only a long list of executed machine instructions. In DS-5, emphasis is given to present this data the way high-level language developers can easily make sense of it, for example linking the instructions to the respective source code, showing function-level trace analysis, or offering graphical trace visualizations.
Trace-Based Profiling
Based on trace data DS-5 Debugger also generates timeline charts with information to help developers to quickly understand how their software executes on the target and which functions are using the CPU the most. Offering various zoom levels, the timeline can display a heat map based on the number of instructions per time unit or, at its highest resolution, provide per-instruction visualization color-coded by the typical latency of each group of instructions.
