Method for influencing a control unit and manipulation unit

• US 8,074,118 B2
• Filed: 06/01/2009
• Issued: 12/06/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 01/28/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Dspace GmbH
• Original Assignee: Dspace Digital Signal Processing And Control Engineering Gmbh
• Inventors: Dressler, Marc, Hofmann, Daniel, Kellers, Bastian, Hufnagel, Thorsten
• Primary Examiner(s): Riad, Amine
• Application Number:
  US12/475,934
• Publication Number:
  US 20100192015A1
• Time in Patent Office: 918 Days
• Field of Search: 714/45
• US Class Current: 714/45
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3656 using a specific debug interface

Abstract

A method for influencing a control unit by means of a manipulation unit whereby the control unit has at least one microcontroller, at least one memory having a plurality of memory cells and at least one debug interface, and the debug interface has a monitoring functionality for observing the memory content, and by means of the debug interface a first point in time of the control unit for writing a first value to a first memory cell is detected, and a triggering point in time for a processing routine by the manipulation unit is obtained as the result based on the information transmitted to the manipulation unit by the debug interface at the first point in time, and at a second point in time, a second value is written to the first memory cell by the manipulation unit by means of the processing routine via the debug interface before the first memory cell is read by the control unit at a third point in time.

Claims

1. A method for influencing a control unit by a manipulation unit, the control unit having a microcontroller, a memory having a plurality of memory cells and at least one debug interface, the debug interface having a monitoring functionality for observing memory content, the method comprising:

detecting a first point in time at which a first value is written to a first memory cell, wherein the detecting is performed by the debug interface,

obtaining, by the manipulation unit, a triggering point in time for a processing routine, wherein the triggering point is obtained based on information transmitted to the manipulation unit by the debug interface at the first point in time, and

writing a second value to the first memory cell at a second point in time, wherein the second value is written to the first memory cell by the manipulation unit via the debug interface by using the processing routine, and wherein the second value is written to the first memory cell before the first memory cell is read by the control unit at a third point in time.

2. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

determining a result, by the manipulation unit, wherein the result indicates whether the second point in time is before the third point in time and,

depending on the result, outputting a predefined value.

3. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

determining a length of time required by the control unit for writing the first value to the first memory cell and reading the first memory cell by the control unit.

4. The method according to claim 3, wherein the determining is performed by analysis of program code of the control unit.

5. The method according to claim 4, wherein the analysis of the program code is performed without using the control unit.

6. The method according to claim 3, wherein the length of time required by the control unit is determined by the manipulation unit by using a monitoring function of the debug interface.

7. The method according to claim 3, wherein the memory cell of the control unit is output by the manipulation unit based on a size of intervals of read-write accesses occurring in the control unit.

8. A manipulation unit for influencing a control unit, wherein the control unit has a microcontroller, a memory and a debug interface, the debug interface having a monitoring functionality for observing memory content, wherein the debug interface is configured to detect a first point in time of writing to a first memory cell and to transmit a first value to the manipulation unit, the manipulation unit being configured to:

allow a processing routine to run on the basis of the first point in time,

determine a second value by the processing routine, and

write the second value at a second point in time to the first memory cell via the debug interface before the first memory cell is read by the control unit.

9. A method for influencing a control unit, the control unit having a microcontroller, a memory cell and a debug interface, the debug interface having a monitoring functionality for observing memory content, the method comprising:

detecting when a first value is written to the memory cell at a first point in time;

transmitting information indicative of the first value and the first point in time to a manipulation unit;

determining, based on the transmitted information, a triggering point for initiating a processing routine; and

writing, based on the processing routine, a second value to the memory cell at a second point in time, wherein the second value is written to the memory cell before the memory cell is read by the control unit at a third point in time.

10. A system, comprising:

a control unit having a microcontroller, a memory cell, and a debug interface, the debug interface having a monitoring functionality for observing memory content; and

a manipulation unit in communication with the control unit, the manipulation unit having a processing routine, wherein the manipulation unit is configured to

receive information indicative of a first value written to the memory cell and a first point in time at which the first value was written;

determine a triggering point, based on the information, for initiating the processing routine; and

write, based on the processing routine, a second value to the memory cell at a second point in time, wherein the second value is written to the memory cell before the memory cell is read by the control unit at a third point in time.