ARM Vstream for software development applications

Vstream is said to enable more efficient software development in the early stages of system design, improving the utilisation of hardware resources and reducing project risk and time to market for ARM processor-based devices.

When used in conjunction with Vstream, software debuggers such as the ARM RVD debugger provide a responsive graphical debug environment for processors running on verification systems.

From the debugger it is possible to stop the processor, view and change the value of processor registers and system memory and single-step through code.

With Vstream, large software images can be downloaded to memory in a matter of seconds, ARM said.

Vstream implements a transaction-based connection to the RTL, not requiring any external hardware accessories to be physically attached.

This lowers the setup and maintenance cost of hardware-assisted verification farms and increases their flexibility when handling multiple remote debugger connections.

All current ARM Cortex processors are supported by Vstream, including the ARM Cortex-A5 and ARM Cortex-M0 processors.

Furthermore, it enables the simultaneous connection of multiple debuggers to a target, an essential function in bringing up multi-core devices, such as those based on the Cortex-A9 MPCore processor.