Implementation of On-Chip Dynamic Trace for Microprocessors

This paper presents an on-chip dynamic trace design method which is very useful for the real-time dynamic trace of the program executing process of embedded microprocessors. We introduce an on-chip tracer (OCT) module to fulfill this dynamic tracing task by setting watchpoints at some locations of user program in order to trace and output the information on these spots. As a result, debugger can find out program errors and monitor or reconstruct the executing route of user program. This OCT module needs only a few registers rather than a special on-chip trace buffer (OCTB) which is an essential component for traditional trace methods. Finally, the results of simulation prove that the on-chip dynamic trace debugging is accomplishable with the help of this OCT module