Tessent SystemInsight: simultaneous analysis of hardware and software in complex SoC designs

Newly renamed and upgraded, the Tessent™ SystemInsight integrated development environment (IDE) now supports cycle-accurate processor trace and a range of open-source Python implementations for analytics.

Full system debug and optimization tool for SoC  

Silicon bring-up, validation and debug can be one of the most time-consuming and costly parts of the silicon development process. Bugs that did not appear during verification can start appearing when hardware, software and system stimuli are brought together in the first runtime environment. Many of these effects are subtle, hampering performance in unexpected ways, while not actually causing the system to become non-functional. Design teams can tackle this complexity head-on with the combination of Tessent Embedded Analytics functional monitoring in the silicon, and the Tessent SystemInsight IDE on the host side.

Tessent SystemInsight – marketed by UltraSoC prior to its acquisition by Siemens as UltraDevelop2 – is a complete Eclipse-based (IDE) that extends the features of a traditional debugger (run control, trace) with support for heterogeneous SoC designs, the simultaneous debug of hardware and software, and remote debug. The SystemInsight IDE delivers full system visibility when connected to an SoC equipped with Tessent Embedded Analytics, with seamless support for diverse instruction set architectures (ISAs) and manycore designs in one integrated tool. It allows engineers to simultaneously view the behavior of hardware structures and the execution of software across the entire SoC.

Tessent SystemInsight meets the needs of hardware, firmware and software teams who need an efficient, easy-to-use tool suite that gives visibility and control of the operation of hardware and software within an SoC. In a complex, heterogeneous system developers need:

• Fully-featured multi-core run control and trace
• Configuration of Embedded Analytics on-chip IP
• Presentation of system data from embedded monitors
• Post processing and data visualization capabilities
• Remote debug

Tessent SystemInsight delivers all these capabilities, while allowing designers to monitor not just activity at individual cores but also what is happening across the greater SoC bus fabric. It provides a holistic, system-level approach to SoC development and debug, allowing engineers to view and analyze interlinked behavior of hardware, firmware and software at any level of abstraction.

Customers are no longer restricted to using Python3 from Anaconda. SystemInsight now additionally supports installations using Python.org, removing any obligation to license Anaconda and allowing the design team to choose the toolset that best fits their needs.

Updated functionality within the leading EA interactive development tool 

The change of name from UltraDevelop to SystemInsight coincides with a major new release of the IDE, enhancing the functionality available to engineering teams working with Tessent Embedded Analytics. JRE 11 is now bundled inside SystemInsight and the Java code has been updated to support Eclipse 2019-12 (4.14). There is no longer a requirement for Java to be preinstalled to install SystemInsight. If there are no other programs using Java on your system, you can even uninstall Java.

Other notable updates include:

• Instruction trace, cycle by cycle

Tessent SystemInsight now provides support and visualization for cycle accurate trace delivered off-chip using the latest Embedded Analytics Trace Encoder. This allows developers to see precise, tabulated timing for every instruction traced, even in systems where multiple instructions can be in flight, pending retirement.

• Remote debug, across the globe  

Tessent SystemInsight is remarkably flexible in that it is entirely target agnostic; it will interface to and debug a functional target whether it be simulated, emulated, in FPGA or silicon. But more remarkable still is its ability to provide remote debug. Never before has it been so important to have a workforce which can work effectively and productively remotely, and SystemInsight supports this perfectly by allowing remote connectivity to a target SoC over TCP, wherever it may be.

Tessent SystemInsight will continue to evolve and improve to support new hardware IP for Embedded Analytics as Tessent develops it. SystemInsight is the one-stop IDE that allows companies to keep on top of the ever-expanding suite of analytics IP from Tessent Embedded Analytics.

Now better than ever, read more about Tessent SystemInsight here.