Next-generation emulator contributes to reduced development time

Renesas Electronics has announced the E2 Emulator, a new-generation on-chip debugging emulator. The E2 is intended as a development environment for the latest devices in the company’s RH850, RX, and RL78 families of MCUs, and for a selection of automotive SoCs. The new emulator supports the extended debugging functionality of the RH850 Family and contributes to shortening the time required for CAN communication debugging and the current consumption debugging. Recently, use of electronics for automotive control is increasing to improve the fuel efficiency, safety, and comfort of vehicles, and the number and variety of built-in sensors is growing. This leads to an increased size of control programs of MCUs used in ECUs. Since each ECU performs communication control via automotive networks such as CAN, LIN, and FlexRay, and dozens of ECUs are installed in a single vehicle, communication control has become more complicated. Additionally, considering that many ECUs are installed in a vehicle, it has become more important to precisely understand current consumption when each ECU operates and optimize the control programs to achieve low current consumption in automotive systems. One challenge with existing ECU software development is that it is necessary to download the program from the emulator to the MCU. And each time debugging code needs to be added to the control program, it increases the program size and download time. In the case of CAN communication, a significant contributor to this repetitive debug cycle is the need to use a CAN analyzer along with the emulator – these devices have not traditionally operated synchronously. In the case of low power optimization, the emulator is typically used side-by-side with an ammeter or current probe, and it is difficult to link the current consumption peak specifically to the matching point of time in the running code. To address this challenge, the company has integrated additional debugging features required for software development as solutions into the E2. Specifically, the new emulator reduces the time required to determine the cause of an error during CAN communication by providing a connection to the bus that allows message timing to be matched with executing code; it also makes it easier to determine the cause of current consumption peak by monitoring the current draw of the device and correlating that with the code. This enables system developers to potentially reduce development time in these areas to as little as one-tenth compared with the existing method of repeated program modification and downloads. Even when the modification/download cycle is necessary, the increased download speed of the E2 lessens its impact on the speed of the development cycle.