Debugging on Jetson Platforms

NVIDIA® Jetson™ devices support debugging tools that allow Jetson application developers to put the processor into known states and trace its behavior while running. Use these tools to debug software you have developed using NVIDIA Jetson Board Support Package (BSP).

The Jetson architecture’s debugging support provides:

  • Reduced power leakage

  • Enhanced security

  • Availability of standard interfaces

This topic describes the debuggable blocks, their debugging strategies, and the software implementation of the hardware and software features in the Technical Reference Manuals (TRMs) for Jetson processors. Use the appropriate TRM as your primary source for information and debugging.

Debugging Improvements

The following table describes improvements in debugging features for Jetson devices.

Hardware Feature
Benefit 		Jetson AGX Orin Jetson Xavier NX series & Jetson AGX Xavier series
Hardware interface to debugger.
  JTAG (4-pin connector).
  SWD (2-pin connector).
X
X
Debug interface connected to CPU via Debug Communication Channel with Memory Access Mode in v8.
 
Debugger downloads & uploads code faster. 		X
Debug connection to AXI-AP via JTAG or SWD).

System access when CPUs are unavailable (powered down, dead, in reset, etc.).

X
AXI-AP 34-bit address can access MMIO & DRAM with requiring SMMU. X
Connection to SNIC allows access to entire system.
 X
Debugger accesses to memory are coherent.
 X
CoreSight support via JTAG or SWD
  Connection to APE.
  Connection to BPMP, SPE, & SCE.
  Connection to RCE, PVA0, & PVA1.
X
X
X
Trace Storage circular buffer.

Larger buffer yields a longer duration trace. Buffer is preserved through WDT resets.

32 KiB

CoreSight Trace Sinks ETF and ETR

The following table describes ARM® CoreSight™ trace sink characteristics for Jetson processors. These characteristics include the corresponding Embedded Trace FIFO (ETF), ETR, and USB limits.

Characteristic ETF (32 Kib) DDR via ETR DMA TPIU (Jetson Xavier NX series & Jetson AGX Xavier series only) USB
Throughput 41.58 Gbps @ 408 MHz, 128‑bit * 41.58 Gbps 800 Mbps Real time processor tracing requires reduction of CPU frequency.
Intrusive No Yes No Yes
Available on commercial devices Yes Yes Yes Yes
Use Cases Collect trace for watchdog reset; code optimization for the CCPLEX. Collect trace for watchdog reset; code optimization for the CCPLEX. † Collects trace for watchdog reset; code optimization for the CCPLEX. Tracing is limited to bandwidth speed. Single-CPU trace at low frequency, or APE-only trace to avoid DRAM bandwidth saturation. Tracing is limited to USB speeds.
*  Contact NVIDIA for higher frequency requirements.

†  Note the high bandwidth requirement at DDR = 25%.

AMBA Trace ID (ATID) Mapping

The following tables describe mapping for ARM AMBA Trace ID (ATID). When collecting trace from multiple sources, the trace sinks (ETF and ETR) use ATIDs to segregate trace data.

Jetson Xavier NX series and Jetson AGX Xavier series
Processor type ATID Processor Protocol
CCPLEX using NVIDIA processors n/a CPU0 to CPU7 n/a
ARM® Cortex™-A5 Configurable BPMP ETMv3
Configurable SPE ETMv3
Configurable SCE ETMv3
Configurable RCE ETMv3
Configurable PVA0 and PVA1 ETMv3
APE ARM Cortex-A9 0x20 CPU0 PTF1.0
STM 0x10 n/a MIPI STP

Uncore: Performance Monitor Unit

Applies to: Jetson AGX Xavier series and Jetson NX series only

Several functional units on the T194 CCPLEX (e.g., the SCF and the L2) are outside the cores. These units are collectively referred to as the uncore. Some of them report uncore performance events and event counters, which are not counted by the core performance counters of the core’s Performance Monitor Unit (PMU).

The NVIDIA Uncore Perfmon Extension to the ARM® Performance Monitor Extension (also called “Uncore Perfmon”) allows ARM software to access its performance counters. The Uncore Perfmon Extension is designed to resemble the standard ARM Performance Monitor Extension as much as possible.

You can download ARM PMU documentation from the Linux Kernel Archives.

Device-Specific Features and Limitations

This section describes features and limitations of Uncore Perfmon on specific NVIDIA Jetson systems on chip (SoCs).

  • For T194 modules (Jetson Xavier NX series and Jetson AGX Xavier series):

    • Uncore Perfmon events are supported for all cores and clusters.

    • For more information about using the counters, see the kernel documentation within source code at:

      <kernel-source-path>/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/platform/tegra/nvidia,carmel-pmu.txt