Diagnose von Feldbussen im Systemverbund

Embedded Systems are becoming more complex. As both software and hardware become more complex, debugging and testing consume higher proportions of the development budget and project time. The PRACTICAL tools offer one way to reduce this.The PRACTICAL tools focus on CPU independent hardware assisted debugging tools for embedded systems, both for single CPU systems and for distributed systems. The architecture separates the debugging environment into three groups: GUI (display) and analysis engines, Debugging heads, Targets being debugged. The first two groups are connected via Ethernet and TCP/IP, whereas debug heads are connected as required by the target hardware. All the tools are independent of the target CPU, providing an alternative to the ever increasing cost of In Circuit Emulation as CPU speeds increase.Debugging hosts may be any standard PC or Workstation. PRACTICAL tools take advantage of the universal availability of Ethernet connections to allow a wide range of hosts to be connected simultaneously. These hosts may cover simple functions such as target program generation, debug head control, target node simulation and I/O simulation control.The debugging heads will be programmable by the user, using portable applications, so permitting the wide variety of debugging requirements to be satisfied by a range of small applications held on the debugging host and downloaded as required to the debugging heads. Debugging heads may include device simulators for I/O timing analysis, program loaders, CPU debug access via JTAG or BDM, fieldbus network analysers.