TDA4VM: ARMDS tool (Streamline Performance Analyzer)

Hello Gokul,

I am aware of multiple 3rd party JTAG based debug tool vendors who have enabled their tool for TDA4.  I do recall one ARMDS tool user who did seem to have gotten it working on their own.   ARMDS should be straight forward to enable as the TDA4 SOC was designed such that ARM LTD's DAP discovery process can run.  At the base of the debug APB a ROM table exists which has the resource information for the ARM Coresight compliant blocks.  The DS tool should be able to scan that and get basic debug for the Cortex-R5 and Cortex-A72 core.  The Cortex-M core can also work after a work around is issued to the Power-AP (TI specific AP which hangs off the standard ARM DAPBUS).  I doubt the ARM DS tool can debug the C7x or C6x without expert work, but it all the ARM cores and their trace should be possible. If a customer has DS support it might be ARM support could help them get going.

I would guess that the main road block for enablement would be around SOC power and reset specifics.  For example the A72 is not powered on by default so a debug tool which tried to statically access it would fail at its probe.  If that same tool was run 'after' something like firmware or u-boot has brought it out of reset it likely would work right off.   For bare metal JTAG work some scripts need to be run from the APB-AP & AXI-AP ahead of trying to connect to core.  This information is part of public TI-CCS GEL script files (or in public TRACE32 CMM files).  If the end user only wants to debug/profile at driver or an application layer then delaying the debug tool attach till a bit into boot is all that would be needed.

Regards,
Richard W.