IAR Systems and SEGGER announce flash breakpoints functionality in IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM

There is a strong market for ARM7- and ARM9-based microcontrollers with embedded Flash, and IAR Systems and Segger share a mission to provide the best tools for all these customers. The most important parameters of a debug session are arguably the breakpoints, which are used to halt program execution at a predetermined location. The ARM7/9 architecture provides only two so-called hardware breakpoints, which is a severe limitation if debugging is performed in embedded Flash memory. One hardware breakpoint is often reserved for debugger functionality, leaving only a single breakpoint available to the programmer. However even an HLL instruction step over an IF construct requires two available breakpoints in Flash. With Flash Breakpoints (FlashBP) this limitation no longer exists. The high performance algorithm used in the implementation of FlashBPs ensures that delays are hardly noticeable compared to debugging in RAM. FlashBPs are available for most of the popular ARM7/9 embedded Flash microcontrollers.

“The complete integration of Flash Breakpoints into IAR Embedded Workbench simplifies debugging in Flash,” commented Mats Ullström, Product Director of IAR Systems. “We are confident that many of our customers will wish to shorten their development time by requesting this option.”

“The real value of Flash Breakpoints becomes evident right away when target memory migrates from RAM to Flash,” said Rolf Segger, Managing Director of SEGGER. “To begin with, you would use several breakpoints for a program that still fits in the much smaller RAM, but without Flash Breakpoints you would then be restricted to just two breakpoints and a much larger, more complex program.”
Flash Breakpoints will be available in Q2-2008.