APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR FORMING A BUS TRANSACTION TRACE STREAM WITH SIMPLIFIED BUS TRANSACTION DESCRIPTORS
A method of monitoring bus transactions between masters and slaves includes generating simplified bus transaction descriptors to characterize bus transactions. Simplified bus transaction descriptors are consolidated to form a bus transaction trace stream. The bus transaction trace stream is routed to a probe.
1 . A method, comprising:
monitoring bus transactions between masters and slaves;
generating simplified bus transaction descriptors to characterize the bus transactions;
consolidating the simplified bus transaction descriptors to form a bus transaction trace stream;
routing the bus transaction trace stream to a probe.
2 . The method of claim 1 further comprising uploading the bus transaction trace stream from the probe to a computer.
3 . The method of claim 1 further comprising reconstructing bus activity based upon the bus transaction trace stream.
4 . The method of claim 3 further comprising characterizing the bus activity with bus activity data.
5 . The method of claim 4 wherein the bus activity data includes two or more of: master identification, slave identification, channel identification, request type, burst length, response type, trigger information, and timing information.
6 . The method of claim 4 wherein the bus activity data includes raw, unfiltered data.
7 . The method of claim 4 wherein the bus activity data includes graphical indicia for distinguishing the activity of each master.
8 . The method of claim 4 wherein the bus activity data includes filtered data characterizing a subset of bus activity.
9 . A system, comprising:
a bus;
bus agents connected to the bus, each bus agent generating simplified bus transaction descriptors characterizing bus traffic; and
a funnel to consolidate the simplified bus transaction descriptors from the bus agents to form a bus transaction trace stream.
10 . The system of claim 9 further comprising:
master devices connected to the bus;
slave devices connected to the bus; and
a switch connected to the bus to route traffic between the master devices and the slave devices.
11 . The system of claim 9 wherein each bus agent compresses bus transaction information to form simplified bus transaction descriptors in a common format.
12 . The system of claim 9 wherein the bus agents generate information to facilitate subsequent reconstruction of bus activity.
13 . The system of claim 9 wherein the funnel includes a configurable multiplexer.
14 . The system of claim 13 further comprising a register to store a configuration value for the configurable multiplexer.
15 . The system of claim 9 wherein the funnel is configured to support communication with a probe.
16 . The system of claim 9 wherein the master devices are selected from multi-purpose processors, digital signal processors, audio processors, video computation elements, and direct memory access controllers.
17 . The system of claim 9 wherein the slave devices are selected from memory blocks and peripherals.
18 . The system of claim 9 wherein the simplified bus transaction descriptors include request address information, transaction type, and burst information.
19 . The system of claim 18 wherein the request address information includes a slave identification and an offset.
20 . The system of claim 9 wherein the simplified bus transaction descriptors include read data transfer information and identification request information.
21 . The system of claim 9 wherein the bus transaction trace stream includes a slave identification, a burst length, a request phase transaction identification and a response phase transaction identification.
22 . The system of claim 9 in combination with a probe, wherein the probe time stamps the bus transaction trace stream.
23 . The system of claim 22 in further combination with a computer to reconstruct bus traffic based upon the bus transaction trace stream.
24 . The system of claim 23 further comprising computer code executed by the computer to display a time associated with a bus transaction.
25 . The system of claim 23 further comprising computer code executed by the computer to display a time differential between two bus transactions.
26 . A computer readable storage medium, comprising executable instructions to characterize:
a bus;
bus agents connected to the bus, each bus agent generating simplified bus transaction descriptors characterizing bus traffic; and
a funnel to consolidate the simplified bus transaction descriptors from the bus agents to form a bus transaction trace stream.
27 . The computer readable storage medium of claim 26 further comprising executable instructions to characterize:
master devices connected to the bus;
slave devices connected to the bus; and
a switch connected to the bus to route traffic between the master devices and the slave devices.