Duo provide debugging technology for autonomous cars

11th October 2017

Alice Matthews

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Datasheet

Manufacturer of microprocessor development tools, Lauterbach, and QNX, have been working together to provide JTAG debugging capabilities for the QNX Version 7.0 software platform. The development team behind QNX 7.0 regards it as the most advanced and secure embedded operating system (OS) for the automotive industry. QNX Software Development Platform 7.0 (QNX SDP 7.0) is a 64-bit OS that builds on the proven reliability of QNX technology and raises the bar for security and performance in cars.

Developers using QNX 7.0 and Lauterbach's TRACE32 debugger can use the new debugging capabilities with the latest software update. This includes operation on both ARM and Intel architectures, both in 32bit and 64bit technology.

Lauterbach’s TRACE32 debug tools have become a favourite with many hi-tech engineers. TRACE32 supports all the major families of microprocessor cores, covering products from more than 75 silicon companies. The quality and capability of Lauterbach tools enable engineering teams to develop robust code whilst minimising development time lost to debugging.

“We have been working closely with QNX to ensure that we could release the 'best in class' RTOS and debugging technologies,” said Barry Lock, UK Manager at Lauterbach. “While QNX were bringing the new QNX 7.0 version to release status, we have been busy extending and testing our TRACE32 debugger to provide full QNX 7.0 OS aware debugging capabilities."

As well as the existing support for 32bit systems, the new version now also targets 64bit architectures such as ARMv8 and Intel Core technologies. Applications can now use the full 64bit address range, and the debugger will automatically handle the extended addressing.

Being a JTAG debugger, Lauterbach’s TRACE32 is able to halt and debug the whole system, without the need of a target side debug agent. This allows the user to debug startup code, interrupts, drivers and other low level code. TRACE32 will also interpret the MMU tables of the OS, so that the debugger can access the complete physical memory, and also knows the address translations and virtual addresses of all processes and applications.

The developer can therefore debug and inspect everything that runs in his target system. QNX and Lauterbach will be continuing their partnership to ensure the seamless interoperability between the QNX RTOS and TRACE32.