Lauterbach processor support

Lauterbach has launched Trace32 debugging tool support for the PowerPC 440 processor cores embedded in the Virtex-5 FXT FPGA family.

Virtex-5 FXT FPGAs have been added to the company’s list of validated target devices. This is in addition to current Trace32 support for the processor found in earlier Virtex devices as well as the MicroBlaze soft processor.

In multicore designs, any combination of these cores can be debugged concurrently using a single Trace32 debug interface.

The FXT devices are said to be the industry’s first FPGAs with embedded PowerPC440 processor blocks, high-speed RocketIO GTX transceivers and dedicated XtremeDSP processing capabilities.

Each processor, with integrated 32 KB instruction and 32 KB data caches, delivers up to 1100 DMIPS at 550 MHz. Tightly coupled to the PowerPC440 blocks is an integrated 5 x 2 crossbar processor interconnect architecture that provides simultaneous access to I/O and memory for high system throughput.

Trace32 supports all hardware debug features of the processor core, access to ISOCM memories in Virtex-II Pro, Virtex-4 FX and Virtex-4 FXT devices, and flash programming.

To conserve logic resources on the FPGA, Lauterbach has an off-chip real-time trace capability, with trace filters and triggers, that stores data in up to 2 GB of external high-speed memory.