Power debug and analysis tools incorporated
IAR Systems has incorporated newly developed power debug and analysis tools within IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM and will include the technology as standard.
The tools allow users to correlate current sampling alongside program execution, allowing the software's influence on power consumption to be monitored. This, it claims, provides developers with the means to optimise source code in order to minimise power consumption.
Power measurements can be visualised in various ways in IAR Embedded Workbench. In its simplest form, a power log window displays the measured current and the time and location of the program counter when it was sampled.
A graph of power consumption can be presented in Embedded Workbench's timeline window, where the call stack, interrupt activity and variable values can also be displayed. In this way, power consumption can be mapped against the program's execution, allowing developers to see what events trigger higher power consumption.
Power profiling at the function level lets developers know how much power is consumed during the execution of each function and what the average current is during execution. Power profiling also points to where efforts are needed to optimise for lower power consumption.
