Debug Products

USB + JTAG + DSP = Debugging Tool From Electronic Warfare Associates, the compact Blackhawk JTAG emulator plugs into a standard PC USB port. The Blackhawk draws all power through the USB connection. It handles the TMS320 family of digital signal processors from Texas Instruments (TI) and works with TI's Code Composer Studio integrated development environment (IDE). Drivers are provided for Windows 98 and Windows 2000. The Blackhawk USB JTAG emulator costs $1995.•Electronic Warfare Associates Inc.(877) 983-4514; www.blackhawk-dsp.com LAN-Based JTAG Emulator Handles ARM Trace Port Agilent's E5904B probe integrates a JTAG emulator and Trace Port Analyzer for ARM7 and ARM9 cores with a LAN. The Trace Port support works with ARM's Embedded Trace Macrocell (ETM) technology. Many alternatives use separate JTAG and trace modules. The E5904B handles up to 200-MHz clock speeds. Agilent has probes that handle PowerPC, MIPS, MPC8xx, and MELPS 7700 processor families. Agilent probes work with Green Hills' Multi, Mentor Graphics' XRAY, and SDS debuggers. The E5904B is priced at $2500.•Agilent Technologies(650) 752-5000; www.agilent.comLAN Emulator Controls A Range Of Cores The Corelis NetICE-1149.1 JTAG controller plugs into a 10BaseT or a 10Base2 Ethernet network. It has four independent JTAG boundary scan ports. The on-board 32-bit RISC controller has a 4-Mbyte scan data memory buffer that's expandable to 16 Mbytes. Dual-port operation allows the scan ports to operate while data is downloaded. The maximum NetICE JTAG clock speed is 35 MHz. Its programmable TDI receives skew to compensate for test-cable length delay. The NetICE-1149.1 also has 16 general-purpose I/O lines for remote control and sensing. The NetICE-1149.1 controller runs $1895.•Corelis(562) 926-6727; www.corelis.comBDM/JTAG Probe Runs Ethernet Or Serial Ports Abatron AG's BDI 1000 and BDI 2000 on-chip debugging solutions have a serial port and an Ethernet port, providing a low-cost or high-speed connection. Functionally similar, the BDI 2000 provides 16-Mbit/s scan speeds or about two times the throughput of the BDI 1000. Both support ColdFire, M-Core, HC, PowerPC, ARM MPC-7450, and Tricore processor architectures. The probes work with a variety of debuggers, including those from Wind River, Metrowerks, Esmertec, MetaWare, Tasking, and Mentor Graphics. It also works with GNU-based tools. The BDI 1000 costs $1220 to $1870, and the 2000 costs $1870 to $2380.•Ultimate Solutions Inc.(603) 929-9855; www.ultsol.comParallel Port Probe Manages A Host Of Architectures A parallel port still provides an easy debug connection. Macraigor Systems' low-end JTAG probe, the Wiggler, plugs into a standard PC parallel printer port. It supports ARM, StrongARM, PowerPC, MIPS, Motorola DSPs and processor cores, the PLX IOP 480, and Tensilica's reconfigurable embedded processor architecture. The Wiggler works with most embedded debugging environments. Its low cost reflects its limited performance. But the convenience of parallel port operation is available at high performance with the Macraigor Systems' intelligent Raven. The Wiggler is $150, and the Raven is $750.•Macraigor Systems(617) 739-8693; www.macraigor.comTMS320 DSP JTAG Probe Plugs Into PCI Bus The PCI bus is still a handy way to link to debug tools. Texas Instruments' TMS320 DSP family is serviced by Spectrum Digital's SPI525 system. This PCI-based system picks up performance by embedding the JTAG processing inside a PC, proving fast access to the JTAG scan chain. The SPI525 also has an adjustable voltage range from 1 to 5 V, allowing it to operate with a variety of TMS320 cores and processors. Pricing of the SPI525 PCI starts at $2995.•Spectrum Digital Inc.(281) 494-4500; www.spectrumdigital.com