(pressebox) (Lauta, 11.11.2008) pls Programmierbare Logik & Systeme presents - at electronica 2008 in Area A6, Booth S02 - the Universal Debug Engine (UDE) 2.4.12., which enables program trace via the Nexus interface. This function is currently available - in combination with the Universal Access Device 2+ from pls - for the Power Architecture(TM) derivatives MPC55xx and MPC56xx from Freescale as well as SPC56xx from STMicroelectronics.

A 2-bit, 4-bit or, with the MCUs of the MPC55xx family, even 12-bit wide trace data port with up to 180 MHz clock frequency are supported, whereby up to 1 megasamples can be recorded. With a compression of the trace data direct by the trace hardware, this represents a multiple of machine commands. Moreover, every sample can contain eight additional external hardware signals.

Recording of the samples takes place synchronously to the Nexus clock frequency. This enables an optimal use of the trace memory and application optimized timestamps. Start and stop of the recording can be comfortably controlled via pre-trigger, mid-trigger, post-trigger or address-trigger.

The trace window in the user interface offers the developer a direct link from the trace samples to the associated source code, the display of the program runtime on the basis of the timestamps as well as extensive search functions.