PLS‘ debug and trace tool UDE supports ST’s Stellar P3E automotive microcontroller

The Stellar P3E features a multi-core cluster of high-performance Arm® Cortex®-R52+ CPUs and a Neural Processing Unit (NPU). With this, ST aims to drive the development of highly integrated powertrain architectures and consolidate motor controllers, inverters, OBCs, and DC-DC converters into unified systems for hybrid and electric vehicles. In addition to its high computing power and AI acceleration capabilities, the MCU offers a large, expandable memory and intelligent energy management functions.

For the Stellar P3E, PLS has expanded the debug, trace and test tool UDE Universal Debug Engine to enable developers to perform real multi-core debugging for the MCU part of the device. All cores of the Cortex-R52+ multicore cluster are visible within a common, unified debugger instance and can be controlled from within it. The UDE Multi-Core Run Control ensures full synchronization of all cores during debugging at all times. Depending on the use case, the cores can also be started and stopped individually. Multi-core breakpoints, which can be used in shared code, simplify the debugging of complex applications. Such a breakpoint is always effective and completely independent of which core is currently executing the respective code.

The UAD2pro, UAD2next and UAD3+ devices from PLS’ Universal Access Device family, together with the corresponding target adapter, complements the debugger tool UDE and ensure fast and reliable communication with the Stellar P3E MCUs via JTAG or Serial Wire Debug (SWD). For electrically demanding development environments, galvanically isolated adapters are also optionally available, enabling potential isolation up to 1,000 volts.

For non-invasive debugging and more extensive runtime analyses, UDE uses recorded trace data from the Stellar P3E. Among other things, function or task executions over the time are visualized or profiling can be used to uncover optimization potential. The recording of large amounts of trace data can be done either with in the UAD2next or in the UAD3+. For this purpose, 512 MB of trace memory is available in the UAD2next and up to 8 GB in the UAD3+. For fast download of the trace data from the chip to UDE, the UAD2next and UAD3+ provide support for the multi Gbit/s high-speed serial trace interface based on the Aurora™ protocol. UAD3+ Serial Trace Pod 100G an overall trace bandwidth of up to 100 Gbit/s can be achieved.