CIE Components in Electronics
The Altera Corporation and ARM have announced a unique agreement, whereby the companies have jointly developed a DS-5 embedded software development toolkit with FPGA-adaptive debug capabilities for Altera SoC devices. The ARM Development Studio 5 (DS-5) Altera Edition toolkit has been designed to remove the debugging barrier between the integrated dual-core CPU subsystem and FPGA fabric in Altera SoC devices.
By combining an advanced multi-core debugger for the ARM architecture with the ability to adapt to the logic contained in the FPGA, the new toolkit is able to provide embedded software developers with an unprecedented level of full-chip visibility and control through the standard DS-5 user interface. The new toolkit will be included in the Altera SoC Embedded Design Suite and will begin shipping in early 2013.
Altera SoC devices combine a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor with FPGA logic on a single device, giving users the power and flexibility to create custom field-programmable SoC variants by implementing user-defined peripherals and hardware accelerators in the FPGA fabric. Altera is currently shipping initial samples of its Cyclone V SoC devices.
The ARM Development Studio 5 (DS-5) Altera Edition toolkit dynamically adapts to unique customer configurations of the FPGA within the SoC to seamlessly extend embedded debugging capabilities across the CPU-FPGA boundary and unify all software debugging information from the CPU and FPGA domains with the standard DS-5 user interface. When combined with the advanced multi-core debugging capability of the DS-5 Debugger, and the link to the Quartus II SignalTap logic analyzer for cross-triggering capability, the toolkit delivers an unprecedented level of debugging visibility and control that leads to substantial productivity gains.
“Disruptive, innovative silicon devices demand equally disruptive and innovative software tools. That demand has been met by this innovative toolkit for Altera 28 nm Cyclone V and Arria V SoC devices and for upcoming Altera 20 nm SoC devices,” said John Cornish, executive vice president of the System Design Division at ARM. “This technical innovation has unified CPU debugging with FPGA debugging to bolster user productivity. Altera and ARM have made this advanced tool technology with premium, productivity-boosting features widely available through Altera SoC development kits and the Altera SoC Embedded Design Suite. We believe this combination will deliver valuable benefits to our mutual customers.”
The ARM DS-5 toolkit suite offers the most advanced multi-core debugger in the market for the ARM architecture. It supports debugging on systems running in asymmetric multiprocessing (AMP) and symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) system configurations. It is broadly used for board bring-up, driver development, OS porting, bare-metal and Linux application development, through JTAG and Ethernet debugging interfaces, and offers Linux and RTOS awareness.
“We are very proud of the partnership and innovation in this joint work with ARM,” said Vince Hu, vice president of product and corporate marketing at Altera. “The ARM DS-5 Altera Edition toolkit gives software engineers an incredibly powerful development and debugging tool, allowing for the fastest development time for our SoC devices.”
