A Multi-Core Debug Platform for NoC-Based Systems

Network-on-chip (NoC) is generally regarded as the most promising solution for the future on-chip communication scheme in giga-scale integrated circuits. As traditional debug architecture for bus-based systems is not readily applicable to identify bugs in NoC-based systems, in this paper, we present a novel debug platform that supports concurrent debug access to the cores under debug (CUDs) and the NoC in a unified architecture. By introducing core-level debug probes in between the CUDs and their network interfaces and a system-level debug agent controlled by an off-chip multi-core debug controller, the proposed debug platform provides in-depth analysis features for NoC-based systems, such as NoC transaction analysis, multi-core cross-triggering and global synchronized timestamping. Therefore, the proposed solution is expected to facilitate the designers to identify bugs in NoC-based systems more effectively and efficiently. Experimental results show that the design-for-debug cost for the proposed technique in terms of area and traffic requirements is moderate