Lauterbach offers self-calibrating autofocus unit for PowerTrace

Lauterbach has announced a self-calibrating autofocus unit for its PowerTrace Debugger. The Autofocus Unit allows automatic setup of termination voltage as well as reference voltages for both clock and data. Furthermore the delays for clock and data paths are setup automatically. Lauterbach’s TRACE32-PowerTrace Module allows tracing data of different trace-port architectures such as ETM for ARM-cores, NEXUS for Motorola’s Power PC or ST NEXUS SUPER 10, as well as a variety of other architectures. The trace module relies on a preprocessor that is specific to the target microprocessor. In the near future the transfer rate of trace-port data is expected to cross the magic 200 MHz line. To ensure data integrity at those frequencies, it is crucial to terminate signal lines properly and compensate for signal level and delay issues. Even relatively small delay discrepancies and/or out of tune voltage levels can lead to signal integrity issues. Consequently the new preprocessors use a FPGA based hardware to automatically setup proper voltage levels for termination and references for both clock and data, as well as delays for the clock signal and each data path individually. If supported by the microcontroller, the automatic hardware setup can be double-checked by generating test pattern on the trace-port.Source: PCBnewsline