CODESCAPE Development Tools

Imagination Technologies' CODESCAPE® is a comprehensive suite of development tools that supports the unique features of the SuperH processors within a state-of-the-art Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

The CODESCAPE Development System incorporates an integrated development environment tailored and designed to work with SuperH processors. It includes hardware debug adapters, software simulators, performance analysis tools, and many other components essential to successful application development.

Starting out as a specialized development solution for games developers, CODESCAPE is now used worldwide in most areas of embedded development, and has proved its effectiveness by delivering many successful embedded systems. Its comprehensive features and solid support enable rapid development and analysis of code.

Highlights

• Code management via makefile or CODESCAPE Project Manager
• Breakpoint and single-step code in ROM, RAM, or Flash
• Debug the boot process
• Code performance analysis via the Profiler
• Fast downloads to target
• Access PC's file system from target code
• Supports ELF/DWARF v1 and v2 compilers, including Renesas and GNU
• Comprehensive breakpoint conditions and actions
• Powerful IDE
• High-level debug features for C++
• Built-in support for scripting languages such as Python and JScript®
• Advanced scripting and data visualisation
• Nucleus debug support

Application development

CODESCAPE's latest release expands and improves many features already present in the previous version as well as adding a new terminal region, support for more processors, and a set of useful example scripts to run in the greatly enhanced script region. Features such as intermediate build stages and the ability to import and work with existing make files provide a flexible project management system which is an invaluable tool for the development of complex embedded applications.

Firmware development

Firmware development does not require an EPROM emulator; you can initialise the processor's memory and download, run, and start debugging firmware in seconds. In addition, you can program Flash memory from within CODESCAPE and then single-step and breakpoint the boot ROM.

Hardware testing

CODESCAPE uses the JTAG interface to gain control of the target processor as it resets,without the need for a debug monitor or boot ROM code. A wide range of startup options let you specify how the processor boots, or you can just access the system memory and peripherals for initialization and testing. The target can be accessed either by using a script or by downloading applications to system memory and the PC's file system is available to read data files or write logging information.

Script Examples

Example scripts demonstrating CODESCAPE's capabilities can be found here.