The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 18, 2000
Filed:
Mar. 06, 1998
Simon Anthony Segars, Fulbourn, GB;
Peter Logan Harrod, Cambridge, GB;
Andrew John Merritt, Cambridge, GB;
ARM Limited, Cambridge, GB;
Abstract
The present invention provides a debugger interface unit for a data processing apparatus, comprising a control register having a number of fields, each field corresponding to a particular exception routine, and each field being settable to indicate that the debugger wishes to identify an access to the corresponding exception routine. Further, an exception routine catch logic is provided to receive a first signal when a processor core within the data processing apparatus issues an instruction fetch command for an exception routine, and to determine from an instruction address issued with the instruction fetch command which exception routine is being fetched. In addition, the catch logic is arranged to reference the field of the control register corresponding to the determined exception routine to determine if that field has been set, and if the field has been set, to output a breakpoint signal to the processor core. The above approach provides a particularly efficient technique for identifying accesses to exception routines when debugging software, such identification being independent of the base address of the exception routines.