Renesas & SEGGER accelerate RX ecosystem expansion

SEGGER’s SystemView solution gives complete insight into the behaviour of a program, with minimal side effects on the embedded system being observed. It offers cycle accurate tracing of interrupts and task start/stop, plus task activation and API calls when an RTOS is used. It visualises and analyses CPU load by task, interrupts and software timers. By using SEGGER's J-Link debug probe with SystemView streaming data transfer can be benefited from - with analysis in real-time. This enables an in-depth understanding of the application’s runtime behaviour to be derived. Real-time analysis is particularly advantageous when dealing with complex systems consisting of multiple threads and events, and also in bare-metal systems without any RTOS.

Renesas’ RX family of 32-bit MCUs are built around Renesas’ proprietary RXv1/RXv2 CPU core and combine excellent operation performance with superior power efficiency. The RX family consists of four product series: the flagship RX700 series, with the fastest performance and most advanced functions; the standard RX600 series; the RX200 series, which delivers an optimal balance of power efficiency and high performance; and the entry-level RX100 series, with extremely low power consumption. These four series encompass a range of products for solutions within fields such as industry automation, security, home appliance, healthcare and human interface that provide seamless scalability from small-scale to large-scale applications.

Mohammed Dogar, Senior Manager, MCU/MPU Solution Marketing, Industrial & Communications Business Group, Renesas Electronics Europe, commented: “With the addition of SystemView to the RX ecosystem, our customers will have access to a higher degree of development support. SystemView demonstrates the power and efficiency of modern debug tools, where the latest technology ensures an efficient embedded design process. With SEGGER’s support, we can now offer an expanded ecosystem to our customers using the powerful and scalable RX MCU family.”

“As a Renesas Global Platinum Partner, we are proud to be able to help showcase the efficiency of the RX family. Complementing the RX ecosystem with SystemView will open up modern debug functionality to developers using these MCUs in their designs,” added Dirk Akemann, Partnership Marketing Manager, SEGGER.

In order to ensure real-time delivery of data and minimal intrusiveness on the system - that means less than 1µs overhead per call on a 200MHz Renesas RX MCU - SystemView makes use of SEGGER’s unique Real-Time Transfer (RTT) technology. RTT enables up to 2MB/s data transfer for continuous acquisition of real-time data, requiring no hardware other than a J-Link and the standard debug interface. SystemView records the data retrieved from the target and visualises the results in different ways. Data recordings can also be saved for later documentation and analysis. Evaluating a system in this manner expedites the finding and eliminating of problems, as well as allowing greater optimising of the system. It is an essential part of quality management in any professional software development. SystemView interacts seamlessly with SEGGER's RTOS embOS, which features all the recording capabilities needed. SystemView’s operation does not require any OS involvement.