It's certainly something I've considered in the past. An FPGA is not likely to be ideal for the entire device unless you're running a soft core in it (or a hard core like the PowerPC in the old Virtex 4/5 FX series or ARMs like in the new devices from Xilinx and Altera). On-board hard and soft cores have the disadvantage of being really pesky to debug, especially with open source tools.
My preference would be a reasonable microcontroller (high-end Cortex M3/4 like the Kinetis series, or reasonably-priced Cortex A-series or MIPS chip) coupled with an FPGA or CPLD to do the heavy lifting on the serialization. You can tie them together with a nice, fast parallel bus on most modern micros. If there's really significant interest, it's something I might consider looking into further. It does beg some questions, though; is there a history of running OpenOCD embedded (i.e. under a much lighter-weight OS than Linux or Windows)? Linux seems like it would really be a waste of space and horsepower, and no one wants a JTAG box that takes 30 seconds to boot. You're basically talking about something along the lines of commercial JTAG pods like the BDI2000/3000 which present a GDB interface on a TCP socket. There's certainly market for those! - Dave On May 21, 2012, at 4:45 PM, Tomek CEDRO wrote: > Hello :-) > > Simple USB JTAG adapters are not fast enough for operational analysis > of devices. The commercial ones are fast but limited in > functionalities and not extensible. The perfect solution would be to > have/create OpenOCD-BOX that would have fast and extensive GPIO with > buffers, maybe FPGA based, so it could act as JTAG/SWD/SPI/... > interface with Telnet/USB/Serial access for user commands. Having this > solution would also be a good reason to develop and make OpenOCD more > functional maybe some good way for project funding to get boards and > other stuff for developers? :-) > > Anyone know / want to design / has this solution / product? :-) > > Best regards :-) > Tomek > > -- > CeDeROM, SQ7MHZ, http://www.tomek.cedro.info > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Live Security Virtual Conference > Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and > threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions > will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware > threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ > _______________________________________________ > OpenOCD-devel mailing list > OpenOCD-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/openocd-devel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ OpenOCD-devel mailing list OpenOCD-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/openocd-devel
