BTF Trace Generation Framework on RTFParallella : documentation

Introduction

The purpose of this project is to implement a tracing framework based on the Best Trace Format(BTF) to enable the debugging and timing analysis of the tasks executed on multicore heterogeneous platform. The framework has been developed as an extension to the RTFParallella. The documentation for the RTFParallella is available at RTFParallella documentation.

The source code for the changes related to RTFParallella is available in Eclipse APP4MC example repository.

The project also involves extending the existing CDGen application to generate the code for the provided System Model along with the BTF trace framework. The documentation for the CDGen application is available at CDGen documentation.

The source code for the changes related to CDGen is available in Eclipse APP4MC tools repository.

The github link for the RTFParallella and CdGen changes are available at Github RTFParallella and Github Cdgen respectively.

What is Best Trace Format (BTF)

The Best Trace Format is a tracing format for timing evaluation of event based system. It is a Comma Separated Value (CSV) based format for representation of event-traces in ASCII. It allows analyzing the behavior of the system in a chronologically correct manner in order to apply timing, performance or reliablility evaluations on embedded real-time multi-core systems. The specifications of this tracing format is based on OSEK Architecture.

Contribution

This project has been developed as part of Google Summer of Codes 2020. The following tasks has been achieved as part of extension to existing RTFParallella framework and CDGen tool.

• Implement the basic specification of BTF over RTFParallella framework.
• Create a tracing framework based on the BTF specification independent of the hardware platform.
• Implement the proper time scaling instead of tick count which is configurable.
• Establishing timing synchronization between host system and the epiphany co-processor.
• Visualizing the generated trace format on tools such as Eclipse Trace Compass.
• Feature enhancement of CDGen tool to add code generation of tracing functionality.
• Testing and Documentation of the features developed as part of RTParallella and CDGen tool.

Scope

The documentation will include the following:

• Overview of the Adapteva Parallella board along with the development environment setup.
• BTF Specification and its adaptation in the project.
• Implementation details of the tracing framework and synchronisation between multiple cores.
• Usage of tracing framework for different system models and hardware platforms.
• Memory mapping of the BTF trace framework on Adapteva Parallella.
• Feature extension of tracing framework on CDGen tool.
• Limitations and future scope of work.

Index

• Adapteva Parallella
  • Hardware Specification
  • Establishing connection with the Board
• Development Environment setup
  • Dependencies
  • Environment setup
  • Building RTFParallella Using Command Line Interface
• BTF Specification
  • BTF Structure
  • Supported Entities and Events
• BTF Tracing Framework
  • Overview
  • Compilation Steps
  • Framework Implementation Details
• Memory Mapping
  • Internal Memory
  • External Memory
  • Notes
• RTFParallella Enhancements
  • Overview
  • Feature Enhancements
  • Adapdation on RTFParallella
• CdGen Feature Extension
  • Overview
  • Tracing Framework on CdGen
  • Usage
• Binary deployment on Parallella
  • Deployment Script
  • Deployment parameters
  • Invocation of Deployment script
  • Binary Execution on Parallella
  • Tracing Framework Usage
  • Known issues
• Amalthea Model Example
  • Overview
  • Results
• Limitation and Future Work
  • Limitations
  • Future Work