Time stamp feature enhances system performance analysis

"Timing is essential to the success of real-time embedded system development," said Barry Lock, UK Manager of Lauterbach. “This new feature of our TRACE32 tools supports the requirements of quality standards by providing proof of timing and code performance. This is done by extracting the real time task event based trace data from the program flow. This data is recorded in the TRACE32 hardware as part of the hardware based trace flow, for example via NEXUS or ETM."

The extracted data contains task event information and time information and can be saved and exported in CSV format, which can then be used by any external timing analysis and verification tool that supports this file format.

It is then possible to analyse the timing data to perform worst-case analysis, peak loading and many other parameters to help with optimising the design. This feature was developed for AUTOSAR but can be applied to many other environments.