Virtual GDB remote debugging technology and its application in emulator

Abstract

In order to solve the problem that the testbench stimulation and probe insertion debugging method of emulator requires extra hardware resources and has insufficient flexibility in software debugging, a virtual GDB remote debugging technology was researched to improve the debugging ability of the emulator. Firstly,JTAG proxy and JTAG transactor were used to support the connection between the workstation and the emulator. Then the signals between GDB and JTAG proxy were transmitted through VPI to complete the debugging of virtual GDB. Finally, the virtual GDB remote debugging system was applied in emulator for experiments. The results show that the virtual GDB remote debugging system can support breakpoint insertion, single step running, register reading and writing, and other functions. Compared with debugging by probe insertion, the virtual GDB system is almost hundred times faster. It greatly enriches the software debugging method and enhances the debugging ability of emulator, and improves the efficiency of the chip design and verification.

Keywords

• computer simulation; remote debugging technology; emulator; scemi; jtag transactor; openocd