Reissue an ID to a Data Log Even if the Same ID May Be Repeated

• US 20060255985A1
• Filed: 05/16/2006
• Published: 11/16/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 05/13/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Texas Instruments, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Texas Instruments, Inc.
• Inventors: Thome, Bryan, Agarwala, Manisha, Johnsen, John M.
• Granted Patent: US 7,797,685 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 341/63
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3636 by tracing the execution of the program

Abstract

During a trace the timing stream has the active and stall information, PC stream has all the discontinuity information, and the data stream has all the data log information. The various streams are synchronized using markers called sync points. The sync points provide a unique identifier field and a context to the data that will follow it. After data corruption a sync point is inserted into the data stream. The ID of this sync point may repeat a previous sync point ID.

Claims

1. A method of generating efficient timing and sync packets comprising the steps of:

generating leading 11 bits indicating a timing packet is replaced by a different bit pattern; and

generating a following 8 data bits that may be used to encode additional information.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein:

said step of generating a following 8 data bits generates bits representing recurring status patterns.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein:

said step of generating a following 8 data bits generates bits representing additional control functions.

4. A method of recovery from corrupted data or timing packets comprising the steps of:

periodically inserting a timing sync point into a trace stream containing a unique sync point identification; and

in case of a trace data overflow resulting in one or more corrupted data packets, inserting a new sync packet repeating a last issued sync point identification.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising the steps of:

monitoring said embedded sync packets; and

upon detection of a duplicate sync point identification, discarding the preceding corrupted data and decoding restarts at that point.