• 中国计算机学会会刊
  • 中国科技核心期刊
  • 中文核心期刊

Computer Engineering & Science ›› 2025, Vol. 47 ›› Issue (8): 1343-1353.

• High Performance Computing • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Design and implementation of an  instrumentation tool based on FT-X DSP tracing

WEI Zhen1,2,YUAN Yulei1,LIU Yuehui1,2,MO Jiasheng1,2,HU Xiao1,2   

  1. (1.College of Computer Science and Technology,National University of Defense Technology,Changsha  410073;
    2.Key Laboratory of Advanced Microprocessor Chips and Systems,Changsha 410073,China)

  • Received:2024-10-08 Revised:2024-10-25 Online:2025-08-25 Published:2025-08-27

Abstract: Program instrumentation technique encompasses both dynamic technique and static technique,primarily employed for dynamic analysis during program execution.It is widely applied in areas such as vulnerability discovery,defect detection,performance analysis and optimization,serving as a key method for collecting program execution paths and analyzing function calls.In embedded systems,traditional instrumentation methods often face challenges due to constraints such as the absence of an operating system,complex architecture,and limited memory.This paper focuses on static instrumentation algorithms,addressing the instrumentation requirements in embedded system debugging scenarios.In addition to introducing the fundamental principles of program instrumentation and systematically analyzing current typical instrumentation methods,we designed and implemented Dbtrace,an instrumentation tool based on FT-X DSP tracing.Furthermore,to address the overhead issue,we comprehensively measured the execution time overhead and code expansion rate of different instrumentation schemes,comparing them with an uninstrumented program.Experimental results demonstrate that Dbtrace can effectively track and record program execution traces information while reducing memory usage and instrumentation overhead,providing an efficient solution for instrumentation debugging in embedded systems.


Key words: embedded system, digital signal processor, static instrumentation, function call, tracing