New development technology opens a window into real-world performance

The start-and-stop debugging process system developers know all too well can become a task of the past because of Real-Time Data Exchange (RTDX™), new digital signal processing (DSP) analysis technology developed by Texas Instruments.

RTDX provides a window into real-world performance, allowing designers to transmit and receive data between a host computer and DSP devices without stopping their applications to evaluate results. Just as modern medical diagnostic equipment provides a real-time, ongoing analysis of the way a patient's body is functioning, RTDX allows designers to continually monitor their systems and gain real-time insight into their running applications.

This innovative technology, which further extends TI's leadership in DSP Solutions, will be incorporated as a standard capability in many future TMS320 DSP development tools, adding significant value and powerful functionality at no additional cost to users.

The continuous window into the world of TMS320 DSP applications -- such as telecommunications, mass storage and digital control systems -- equips customers with essential development building blocks to increase ease-of-use, productivity and time-to-market. TI expects its third parties to use the RTDX capability as a foundation for their products, freeing them to focus on creating application-specific development tools.

Easy analysis

TI's RTDX capability will allow easy analysis for a variety of current and emerging DSP systems.

Wireless telecommunication designers will be able to capture the output of their vocoder algorithms to check the implementations of speech applications.

Embedded control systems will benefit, and hard disk drive applications can be tested without improper signals to the servo motor crashing the drive.

Engine control designers will be able to analyze changing conditions like heat and environmental factors while the control application is running.

In all cases, users can select visualization tools for these applications in the way it is most meaningful for them. RTDX enables live and saved data display through an easy-to-use, object linking and embedding (OLE) application program interface (API) that easily connects to industry-standard, third-party application-specific or customized visualization packages.

The technology is based on communication between TI's extended development system (XDS) emulator hardware and software and a very small procedural library that TI will make available on future TMS320 DSPs. Developers use C or DSP assembly code to address an internal data exchange library, which in turn makes use of a scan-based emulator to move data on and off chip via the IEEE 1149.1 (JTAG) serial test bus.

The emulation logic built into TI DSP cores allows the host to transmit data to and receive it from the DSP while the target application is running at full speed. Initially, the RTDX capability will support data transfer rates at least 8 kilobytes per second, sufficient for running control, servo and audio applications at full speed. Future transfer rates will increase by a factor of 10 or more as emulation logic technology evolves.

RTDX represents a fundamental new approach to system debug and offers significant advantages over methods currently used. Sometimes developers slow down their systems to obtain dynamic readings, but the resulting slow-motion version does not always reflect the true conditions of full-speed operation.

Alternatively, DSPs and other components can integrate in-circuit emulation (ICE) structures to perform real-time monitoring. Adding an ICE structure to the target component makes it a variant of the production component; therefore, the emulation may not be definitive in the results it yields. RTDX eliminates the time and cost involved in creating an extra version of a chip that includes ICE structures. Because the relatively small test structures on-chip that RTDX addresses are part of the production device and not an ICE add-on, developers obtain results identical to those of the finished product and know they will not require an additional version of the chip for debugging.

RTDX support in TMS320C54x development tools is expected to be available in mid-1998, with support of other leading TMS320 DSPs available in 1998 and beyond.

RTDX is a trademark of Texas Instruments.

For complete information, order: RTDX White Paper (SPRY012). See Order form