Debug Tools for the new XMC4000 Microcontroller Family of Infineon

07 February 2012 – Synchronized with the market launch of the new XMC4000 microcontroller (MCU) family of Infineon Technologies which is based on ARM Cortex-M4 processor, PLS Programmierbare Logik & Systeme presents its Universal Debug Engine (UDE) 3.2.1, optimized test and debug tools for the high performance and also energy efficient SoC devices.

Both the UDE 3.2.1 and PLS’ Universal Access Device 2 (UAD2) fully support the debug resources and peripherals of the new XMC4000 MCU family. The integrated FLASH/OTP programming function of the UDE guarantees maximum speeds in the entire erase-download-program-verify cycle.

In particular, the numerous possibilities for graphical representation of variables and expressions of them to physical quantities within the Universal Debug Engine are of benefit to the real-time characteristics of the new XMC4000 microcontroller family. Reading and writing of the entire main memory by the debugger without limiting the real-time behavior is possible while a program is running. This not only allows the animation of variable, registers and memory contents during runtime. The periodical recording of the program counter enables a profiling function with presentation of the percentage share of functions on the runtime of the application.

Dr. Stephan Zizala, Senior Director, Industrial and Multimarket Microcontrollers at Infineon Technologies, emphasized that the simultaneous availability of the XMC4000 MCU family and PLS’ UDE 3.2.1 was intended to provide developers with a particularly fast time-to-market. “PLS provides extraordinarily powerful solutions for debugging of highly real-time oriented microcontroller applications. The tools are therefore an very good fit for our new XMC4000 microcontroller family that uses the ARM Cortex-M4 processor and offers flexible and highly optimized real-time peripherals. Since PLS’ Universal Debug Engine was already used for verification of the first chips, for testing the first XMC4000 devices and also for preparing software libraries and application examples, the UDE 3.2.1 provides developers with a sophisticated test and debug tool.”

PLS also sees a significant advantage for the users in this approach. “With such complex SoC’s like the devices of the XMC4000 family, which combine the characteristics of a powerful 32-bit ARM Cortex-M4 core with the proven microcontroller peripherals from Infineon, it is extremely important for developers that a stable and sophisticated tool for development, test and maintenance is available right from the start.” explained Heiko Riessland, Product Marketing Manager at PLS.

The Universal Debug Engine for the XMC4000 family is available now.