This e-mail is a call to action for those people
interested in automated configuration of debugging environments. The
SPIRIT Consortium is looking to apply the IP-XACT standard in the area
of machine-interpretable descriptions of debug targets. This effort
is kicking off in September, and early results from this work will be emerging
in early H1 2007. Those people interested in helping improve
flow-integration for the debug ecosystem, including modeling, design
tool and hard prototyping environments, may want to consider participating in
this new activity.
Motivation:
========
As embedded
systems become more complex, and timescales for system development have become
shorter, the effort required to describe such systems to software debug tools
has constantly increased. A large part of this problem is that each debug tool
requires its own description of the target system, and, in most cases, these
descriptions have to be written manually. With regular design iteration
between multiple representations of a design in ESL, implementation and
hard-prototype formats, hand authoring of target descriptions is
becoming impractical. It is necessary to develop a
standard for the description of debug targets that can be generated, maintained
and interpreted by the multiple environments that represent a design
today.
Proposal:
=======
We believe that the IP-XACT standard from
The Spirit Consortium (www.spiritconsortium.org) has the basic elements to form such a
multi-vendor standard . This has a number of
advantages:
- IP-XACT is an
existing standard that is already able to describe much of the information
needed by debug tools. As such the developers of the standard for debug target
descriptions can leverage this existing work, hence drastically reducing the
time and effort needed to develop such a standard. In some cases, prototypes of its usage are already
in evidence.
- Many hardware
design tools (EDA and ESL tools) are able to generate IP-XACT descriptions of
hardware, and use these descriptions to exchange information about the
hardware during the hardware design process. Debug tools can make use of
descriptions generated as part of the hardware design process, hence
drastically reducing the work required to generate debug target
descriptions.
- Formal semantics to check the validity of IP-XACT
descriptions are part of The SPIRIT Consortium standards. This means
that infrastructure for checking these generated descriptions is in
place for the current standards, and will be extended to support IP-XACT for
debug.
Based on market requests, The Spirit
Consortium has decided to
create a new technical working group to standardize the use of IP-XACT to
describe debug targets, and have appointed me interim chairman of the
group. The attached draft charter describes the role of this working
group. I would like to invite you
help launch this group by participating in its first meeting.
The first meeting is open to all interested parties,
whether or not they are members of The SPIRIT Consortium. You may participate in
the meeting either by web and phone conferencing, or in person at ARM Cambridge
. The meeting will run from 4pm to
6pm UK time on Wednesday the 13th of September.
The main agenda
items at this meeting will be:
1 - An introduction
to The SPIRIT Consortium and
IP-XACT.
2 - An introduction
to the use of IP-XACT for debug target description
3 - A review
of the proposed charter of the working group.
4 - Discussion of compelling milestones for delivery
(foundation for a schedule)
5 - A review of the group's working arrangements, and
in particular its arrangements for interworking with other industry groups
working in this area; including
Eclipse Debug DSDP (Device Software Development Platform) Project, and SPRINT
WP4.
Logistics
=======
For remote
participation you will need to participate in both the conference call and the
web conference. The conference call details are:
UK Number : 0870 411 6949
- this is the main dial in
number for UK based participants. When you dial
in, the call will be answered with 'Welcome to MeetingZone' and you will be
prompted to enter your access code followed by #. You will then be asked to give
your name, then press #. If you are not the chair person, you will hear music
until the chair person joins the call and enters the HostAccessCode
number.
International Number: +44
207081 9352
Participant Access
Code: 763897#
The web conference can be
accessed through the URL
Please let me know
if you intend to participate in this meeting.
Anthony Berent
Interim Chairman, Debug Working
Group.
