System-level observation framework for non-intrusive runtime monitoring of embedded systems

As the complexity of embedded systems rapidly increases, the use of traditional analysis and debug methods encounters significant challenges in monitoring, analyzing, and debugging the complex interactions of various software and hardware components. This situation is further exacerbated for in-situ debugging and verification in which traditional debug and trace interfaces that require physical access are unavailable, infeasible, or cost prohibitive. In this article, we present a system-level observation framework that provides minimally intrusive methods for dynamically monitoring and analyzing deeply integrated hardware and software components within embedded systems. The system-level observation framework monitors hardware and software events by inserting additional logic for detecting designer-specified events within hardware cores to observe complex interaction across hardware and software boundaries at runtime, and provides visibility for monitoring complex execution behavior of software applications without affecting the system execution.