New support in Lauterbach TRACE32 tools makes it easy to debug designs combining MIPS and Arm CPUs

TRACE32 supports Imagination's MIPS Release 6 CPUs in an integrated debug environment

London, UK, Feb. 17, 2016 – 

Imagination Technologies (IMG.L) and Lauterbach, the leading manufacturer of microprocessor development tools, announce that they are making it easy to use Lauterbach's popular TRACE32 tools to debug MIPS heterogeneous CPU based systems or systems that combine MIPS CPUs with Arm CPUs. Lauterbach will demonstrate the solution at the upcoming Embedded World Conference and Exhibition.

Lauterbach's TRACE32 is a set of modular microprocessor development tools that provides integrated debug environments for embedded designs. TRACE32 now supports MIPS Release 6 CPUs including the new M-class M6250, the first embedded-class MIPS CPU to incorporate the MIPS On-Chip Instrumentation (MIPS OCI) flexible on-chip CPU debug architecture. Companies can use MIPS OCI to ensure the lowest possible risk and impact on their debug process for highly-integrated heterogeneous SoCs.

Says Norbert Weiss, international sales & marketing manager at Lauterbach: "For many years, Lauterbach has supported the popular MIPS architectures and cores. With TRACE32, the developers who are creating products around MIPS have access to a full range of debug functionality, from bootstrap code to interrupt routines and drivers. Now developers can even use TRACE32 for designs which combine the MIPS and Arm architectures."

Says Jim Nicholas, vice president of MIPS business operations, Imagination: "Because so many of our customers use Lauterbach tools, it's important that TRACE32 work with MIPS OCI. This new development continues to extend the MIPS ecosystem, offering designers an even wider choice of leading development tools. The great amount of focus we are putting on continued development of the MIPS roadmap and ecosystem is enabling potential customers to consider using MIPS CPUs in their systems either as a supporting controller or to replace an Arm or other CPU in their SoC. We've had several customers request the multi-architecture debug solution."

Integrated real-time trace stream with cross-triggering
TRACE32 enables simultaneous debug of the multiple CPUs in a design with 'mixed mode' trace streams. Users can view the interleaved results in a single trace window, with a system-level timestamp to help align the streams. Extended trigger logic enables cross-triggering between the CPU trace logic to make it even easier to debug processor interdependencies.

With its TRACE32 debugger products, Lauterbach provides development tool support for a range of MIPS processors. For more information on Lauterbach support for MIPS, visit www.lauterbach.com/pro/pro__mips.html.

Demonstration at Embedded World
Attendees can see a demonstration of TRACE32 debugging a 'mixed mode' design at the Embedded World Conference and Exhibition in Nuremberg, Germany, February 23-25, 2016. Visit the Lauterbach booth #4-210.

About TRACE32 Tools
The TRACE32 debug tools provide quick, effective processor debugging through a standard JTAG interface for the entire debug process, including run control, OS-support, multicore debugging and on-chip trace. These tools can be connected to the hosts via USB 3.0 or fast Ethernet ports. The included TRACE32 PowerView software provides an efficient and user-friendly high-level language (HLL) debugging for C and C++.

The trace tools of TRACE32 connect to the integrated trace port on the target cores and record program flow information directly from the core in real time. This recording provides the developer with fast and logical troubleshooting capabilities to detect complex errors that only occur under run-time conditions. In addition the time-stamped program flow can be analyzed to provide an overall view of the system performance as well as quality assurance features such as code coverage and cache analysis.

About MIPS CPUs
MIPS CPUs comprise a comprehensive portfolio of low-power, high-performance microprocessor IP cores and architectures, ranging from solutions for high-end applications processing down to solutions for extremely small, deeply embedded microcontrollers. MIPS CPUs power billions of products around the globe. The 64-bit MIPS architecture is widely deployed in a large number of products, and is supported by a vibrant and growing ecosystem, built over more than 20 years.

About Lauterbach
Lauterbach is the leading manufacturer of complete, modular and upgradeable microprocessor development tools worldwide with experience in the field of embedded designs since 1979. It is an international, well-established company with blue chip customers in every corner of the globe and has a close working relationship with all semiconductor manufacturers. At the headquarters in Hohenkirchen, near Munich, the engineering team develops and produces highly proficient and specialized Development Tools, which are utilized all over the world under the brand TRACE32. Our branch offices exist in the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Tunisia, on the East and West coasts of the United States, Japan and China. Highly qualified sales and support engineers are also available in many other countries. For more information visit http://www.lauterbach.com.

About Imagination Technologies
Imagination is a global technology leader whose products touch the lives of billions of people across the globe. The company's broad range of silicon IP (intellectual property) includes the key processing blocks needed to create the SoCs (Systems on Chips) that power all mobile, consumer and embedded electronics. Its unique software IP, infrastructure technologies and system solutions enable its customers to get to market quickly with complete and highly differentiated SoC platforms. Imagination's licensees include many of the world's leading semiconductor manufacturers, network operators and OEMs/ODMs who are creating some of the world's most iconic products. See: www.imgtec.com.

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