Re: [OpenOCD-devel] Debug probe hardware that can read/write target memory directly

[Fewell, E. <ef...@ti...>]

This is code running on the debug probe’s CPU, not the target. It’s flashed into the XDS110 as part of its firmware. So the probe has the “smarts” to do ARM DAP memory transactions directly.

The current software stack issues DAP register accesses to do a memory transaction (e.g. setting CSW, TAP, SELECT, reading the AP, etc.).  The firmware in our probe does all that for us. So the host side code just needs to pass in a request like “read 4 bytes from address 0x20000000 on AP #0”, and the XDS110 does all the work.  The result is fewer USB packets needed, and because this is a full speed USB device, that ends up being a significant performance boost.  This is a low-cost probe.  The base CPU chip only has full speed support.  High speed requires external parts not included in most XDS110 implementations. The purpose of this design was something cheap that could be essentially given away for “free” as part of an evaluation board.

Edward

From: Steven Stallion [mailto:sta...@sq...]
Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2017 8:55 AM
To: Fewell, Edward
Cc: ope...@li...
Subject: Re: [OpenOCD-devel] Debug probe hardware that can read/write target memory directly

Hi Edward,

It sounds like you're describing an algorithm (code that is executed on the target). Is this something that is resident only when firmware is loaded? Is this something that's baked into every firmware image or is it copied to RAM during debugging?

Cheers,
Steve

On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 7:59 AM, Fewell, Edward <ef...@ti...<mailto:ef...@ti...>> wrote:
I am currently implementing the Texas Instruments XDS110 debug probe in OpenOCD. The firmware of this probe includes APIs to read and write memory via the target’s DAP for ARM Cortex based devices. The OpenOCD software stack does not appear to support this and only can execute DAP register transactions via the probe.

Any ideas on how best to implement this feature from within OpenOCD?  The performance gains are huge for this probe. We see almost 40x improvement between the CMSIS-DAP interface vs using our built-in memory calls on the XDS110.

The memory calls within the ARM Cortex architecture code would need to check if the probe supports direct memory calls then route the call to be handled entirely by the probe firmware. Otherwise, it could continue on to do the memory transaction via DAP register calls.

Edward Fewell
Texas Instruments, Inc


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