Description

This document discusses printed circuit board design issues relative to the Texas Instruments TMS320C6000™ platform of digital signal processors (DSPs).

As the sophistication of DSP board design increases, it is important to incorporate debug features into a design. Visibility into the system is important to be able to identify what is going wrong and how. Different levels of visibility may be achieved by providing emulator support to see into the DSP, JTAG support to examine IC interconnect, and signal probe points to view signal waveforms. Simplicity is the key to quickly debugging a board. A sophisticated system may be simplified through isolation of complicated subsystem areas and by providing a default state with a manual system reset. Flexibility allows more debug options. This can be built into a system with the use of configuration switches to provide different operating modes and by providing sockets to allow for upgrading silicon. Taking these steps will allow for a more efficient debug process.