We have been using automated tests on hardware in the Flasher and J-Link departments for some time.
But now with the new J-Link PRO PoE, we felt it was time to get some of the evaluation boards out of the cabinets and build a proper test farm. We are selecting the most popular boards so everyone in the office (and even those working from home) has access and can run tests.
The J-Link debug probe does two important things: It downloads programs into RAM or flash memory, and it enables debugging in real time, with the setting of unlimited breakpoints, viewing of memory registers, and much more. Without this debugging ability, we are back to trial and error. When the debug process just stops, with no […]
Software testing, for embedded or for native solutions, can seem like a headache but it doesn’t have to be! Of course there are challenges. Time and resource limitations can restrict the level of testing and it is difficult to simulate all real-world scenarios and corner cases. This can lead to defects being found in the […]
CPU design is not normally what we do. But: We actually have 2 CPU designed and in use, an 8-bit and a 32-bit CPU. In this article we look at our 32-bit CPU, or rather how we are creating an enhanced version of it with very high Code Density
We are relying more and more on wearable and connected technology, but how do we configure them without a human interface? A great example are the wireless headsets we now all use for video conferencing (thank you Covid). The initial set up of the minimal devices can be challenging, holding buttons in what can sometimes […]
In previous blog posts I have described the division algorithms SEGGER implemented in emRun. However, which algorithm is best (in terms of code size, execution speed, or power efficiency) is very dependent on the target instruction set architectue (ISA) and the way the ISA is implemented in silicon. This article explains how we help to […]
Many people think that in today’s world, the size of a program does not matter. In many cases, that is not true, especially in the world of embedded computing systems. I explain why and introduce a benchmark that makes it possible to easily compare the code-size efficiency of different tool chains (Compiler, assembler, linker, run […]
Modern C++ programming very much abstracts what is happening “under the hood” – i.e. what code the CPU is actually executing. This is nice for the programmer … if it works well. Unfortunately, C++ also introduces a stability problem in embedded systems. Many programmers are unaware of this problem. This post gives some background, explains […]
Securing an embedded system is incredibly important and having a digital signature plays a crucial role in that. A digital signature confirms that a specific piece of information came from a specific organization (i.e. the one with the private key as described below) and has not been modified. Follow-up articles will firstly cover related issues […]
This article describes a new capability that I added to SEGGER emRun, now available in Embedded Studio 6, to support real-time dynamic storage allocation. These enhancements were inspired during my development of a chess engine, and I’ll describe some of the engine design and why emRun now offers a new allocator.