ARM development debugging methods

When using an ARM processor to develop an embedded system, you can select an appropriate development tool to speed up development and save development costs. Therefore, an integrated development environment (IDE) that includes editing software, compiling software, compiling software, linking software, debugging software, engineering management, and function libraries is generally essential, other development tools such as embedded real-time operating systems and evaluation boards can be selected based on the application software scale and development plan.
You can use an integrated development environment to develop ARM-based application software, including editing, compilation, compilation, and linking on a PC, debugging must be completed with other modules or products. Currently, the following common debugging methods are available:
1. Instruction Set Simulator
Some integrated development environments provide instruction set simulators, which allow you to complete some simple debugging work on a PC. However, because the instruction set simulators differ greatly from the real hardware environment, therefore, even if the user uses the Instruction Set Simulator for debugging Program It may also be unable to run in a real hardware environment. The user must complete the development of the entire application on the hardware platform.
2. Resident monitoring software
Resident monitors is a program running on the target board, debugging software in the integrated development environment interacts with resident monitoring software through communication ports such as Ethernet ports, parallel ports, and serial ports, the software control program execution, read/write memory, read/write registers, and breakpoint settings are monitored by the Software Release command notification of the debugging software.
Resident monitoring software is a relatively low-cost and effective debugging method, without any other hardware debugging and simulation equipment. Arm's angel is such software, and most embedded real-time operating systems also use such software for debugging. The difference is that in embedded real-time operating systems, resident monitoring software is a task of the operating system.
The inconvenience of resident monitoring software lies in its high requirement on hardware devices. Generally, application software development can be carried out after the hardware is stable, and it occupies part of the resources on the target board, in addition, the full-speed running of the program cannot be fully simulated, so it is not suitable for some situations with strict requirements.
3. JTAG Simulator
The JTAG simulator, also known as the JTAG debugger, is a device that is debugged through the JTAG border scanning port of the ARM chip. JTAG simulators are relatively cheap and easy to connect. It communicates with the arm cpu core through the existing JTAG boundary scanning port and is completely non-plug-in (that is, it does not use on-chip resources) debugging, it does not need the target memory and does not occupy any ports of the target system. These are necessary for resident monitoring software. In addition, because the target program for JTAG debugging is executed on the target board and the simulation is closer to the target hardware, many interface problems, such as high-frequency operation restrictions and mismatch of AC and DC parameters, the limit on the length of the wire is minimized. Using the integrated development environment and the JTAG Simulator for Development is currently the most widely used debugging method.
4. Online Simulators
The online simulator uses the simulation header to completely replace the CPU on the target board. It can fully simulate the behavior of the ARM chip and provide more in-depth debugging functions. However, in order to be able to simulate a processor with a clock speed higher than MHz at full speed, such simulators usually have to adopt extremely complex design and technology, so they are expensive. Online simulators are usually used in ARM hardware development and are rarely used in software development. The high price is also a factor that is difficult to popularize online simulators.