iSYSTEM makes the high performance of its BlueBox series available for RISC-V developers: The iC5700 BlueBox and iC5000 BlueBox support debugging and tracing for complex applications based on the increasingly popular open standard instruction set architecture. The BlueBox unit comes with the integrated development and test environment winIDEA/testIDEA and helps RISC-V developers to efficiently execute their debug and testing cycles for industrial, consumer, IoT, and automotive applications.
iSYSTEM’s BlueBox supports RISC-V
RISC-V is an open standard ISA (instruction set architecture), which is further developed and promoted by RISC-V International (www.riscv.org). To support customers using this promising alternative architecture, iSYSTEM joined the RISC-V organization and community consisting of software and hardware companies at an early stage and provided target customers with first physical implementations of its proven tools. With the BlueBox technology and software supporting SiFive FE310 and SiFive FU740 systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) as well as GigaDevice GD32VF microcontrollers, iSYSTEM presents its first commercial products for the RISC-V ecosystem – just marking the starting point for more products up the roadmap.
iSYSTEM’s BlueBox for RISC-V gives developers a debug access via JTAG and allows for on-chip FLASH and SPI/QSPI FLASH programming. The probes are suitable for single and multi-core debugging, allowing timing analysis (trace, profiling) and code coverage measurement. Developers can execute stops on reset (depending on SoC and board), debug from reset vector and multicore RUN/STOP syncs. The BlueBox is fully integrated into iSYSTEM’s winIDEA IDE and includes the test tool testIDEA.
As winIDEA is based on the look and feel of Microsoft Visual Studio, developers get a kick start working with the tools. The GUI for the BlueBox base units is equally user-friendly, so developers get quick results and can shorten their development time. testIDEA executes software and regression tests in real-time on the target hardware (on object code level) without requiring any instrumentation. In combination with the isystem.connect test automation library – which can be easily accessed through scripting (e.g., using Python, C#, C++, etc.) and allows for fully automated software testing (e.g., Continuous Integration) – developers get a flexible tool for developing and testing their code.
Further Links and Resources
- RISC-V Web page: https://www.isystem.com/chip-search/risc-v.html
- iSYSTEM winIDEA – IDE and Debugger for RISC-V: https://www.isystem.com/products/software/winidea.html
- iSYSTEM On-Chip Software Analyzer Hardware: https://www.isystem.com/products/hardware/on-chip-analyzers.html
- iSYSTEM Add-on Modules: https://www.isystem.com/products/hardware/iom-accessories-82.html
- Automation Interface: https://www.isystem.com/products/hardware/iom-accessories-82.html