In an effort to further improve the Open Core Protocol’s (OCP’s) ability to speed IP integration, the OCP International Partnership has opened its new debug specification to member review. The specification details an approach to a standardized OCP bus-compliant debug interface. The debug mechanism, an optional OCP port, implements a debug interface socket that can be added to all cores and IP blocks.
The specification supports a uniform method of on-chip system analysis and access to embedded information at the core, multicore, and systems levels. The debug interface socket defines several layers of extended functionality to address the diverse and increasing debug needs for software, hardware, and mixed SoC (system-on-a-chip) prototyping. It is intended to be compatible with other industry standards efforts addressing debug and related on-chip issues.
Work on the specification was completed by the OCP-IP Debug Working Group led by Texas Instruments, HDL Dynamics, MIPS Technologies, and Pixelworks with the close cooperation and welcomed contributions of several other sponsor member companies and other independent organizations.
The document describes an overall debugging framework as the basis of the OCP debug interface. In the same way that the OCP data framework is a functional superset for various bus interfaces and data structures, the OCP debug framework defines an OCP debug-interface-socket that can connect to a superset of debug solutions, including those developed outside of OCP-IP. The specification loosely defines requirements and a set of debug signals at the OCP socket and fabric levels, leaving much of the specific options for implementation open to IP and tools vendors.
Commercial and licensable instrumentation IP and tools supporting many of the debug socket interface options are available today from OCP-IP members.
Companies wishing to participate in the OCP-IP Debug Working Group are invited to contact [email protected]. Visit the OCP-IP Web site to download a copy of OCP-IP’s white paper discussing the topic of debug.
Open Core Protocol International Partnership
www.ocpip.org