Debug with CCS

You can also debug your OpenCL DSP side code using the debug capability in Code Composer Studio (CCS). To do that, you will need an additional hardware, an emulator such as XDS560v2, to connect to the JTAG port of your EVM.

This feature is available only if your TI OpenCL installation is version 01.01.06.00 or newer.

Connect emulator to EVM and CCS

First, connect emulator to the EVM via the JTAG port. Next, depends on whether you want CCS to communicate with emulator via Ethernet or USB, you either connect an Ethernet cable to the emulator or connect emulator to the host machine where you run CCS with a USB cable. Power the emulator up.

Next, launch CCS, “View -> Target Configurations”, create a “User Defined” “New Target Configuration”. For “Connection”, choose your emulator model from the list, e.g. “Spectrum Digital XDS560V2 STM USB Emulator”. For “Board or Device”, choose your EVM model from the list, e.g. “66AK2H”, “TMS320C6678”, or “GPEVM_AM572X”. Device support are often added over time with CCS releases. If you don’t see your device being listed and your CCS installation is old, please update to the latest CCS release. Once “Connection” and “Board or Device” are chosen, please save configuration and test connection to ensure that CCS can talk to the EVM via the emulator.

If you choose to have CCS talk to the emulator via Ethernet, you can use configuration utility that comes with CCS installation to find the IP address of your emulator, for example, launching “XDS560v2 STM Configuration Utility” and then click “Find Ethernet Devices” under “Eth” tab. Or you can google how to find emulator’s IP address using its MAC address. Once the IP address is known, click “Advanced” tab, click “Emulator”, enter “The Emulator IP Address”, save and test connection.

Finally, right click the target configuration that you just made and “Launch Selected Configuration”. Once launched, you should see DSP core 0 (“C66xx_DSP1”) in the list, connect to DSP core 0 and resume running.

Debug DSP side code with CCS

Debugging DSP side code with CCS takes similar steps as debugging with gdbc6x.

  1. Set environment variable TI_OCL_DEBUG to “ccs” before running application, for example, TI_OCL_DEBUG=ccs ./your_ocl_app if you use bash.

  2. Once the application is running, before launching your kernel to DSP, OpenCL runtime will print out a list of CCS instructions that you should perform before continuing, for example,

    • CCS Suspend dsp core 0
    • CCS Load symbols: /tmp/openclwsNYLl.out, code offset: 0x86000000
    • CCS Add symbols: /usr/share/ti/opencl/dsp.out, no code offset
    • CCS Add breakpoint: VectorAdd
    • CCS Resume dsp core 0
    • Press any key, then enter to continue

    You may need to copy the kernel executable and dsp.out to your host filesystem where you run CCS, perhaps kernel source code as well so that CCS can display it when you debug.

  3. Once the CCS symbols have been loaded/added and CCS breakpoints have been set, CCS should stop DSP core 0 at your kernel function entry when you press a key to continue on the host side. From this point on, you can step through the code, check memory contents, check variables values, just as you normally do with CCS debug.

Note

After debugging with CCS, you may not be able to debug with gdbc6x anymore unless you power cycle your EVM.