Software Trace Module (STM)ΒΆ

The Software Trace Module (STM) emits trace events that are emitted by the software execution. Such an STM event is a tuple (id,value). There are generally two classed: user-defined and system-generated trace events.

User-defined trace events are added by the user by instrumenting the source code with calls to an API like TRACE(short id, uint64_t value). A debug tool can map the trace events to a visualization.

Different user threads can emit trace events interleaved. Beside this the operating system can emit relevant trace information too. For both reasons, there are system-generated events.

There are two ways to emit a software trace event. First there is a set of special purpose registers or similar techniques used to emit trace events. Most importantly, each trace event must be emitted atomically. Secondly, the processor core can have hardware to emit software trace events. For example a mode change can be emitted without much overhead.

The generic trace interface is enable, id and value at the core level and the STM handles the filtering, aggregation and packetization as described above.