The Kinetis target supports hardware and software tracepoints for trace collection. Hardware tracepoints use hardware resources to start and stop trace. Hardware tracepoints allow only a limited number of comparators to be set for trace collection because they use DWT comparators to start or stop the trace collection. There are four comparators for Kinetis Cortex M4 core and two comparators for Kinetis Cortex M0+ core.
Software tracepoints on the other hand do not use hardware resources and generate interrupts from software to start and stop trace. They allow you to install infinite number of comparators for trace collection, limited only by the memory available for storing tracepoint data. Software tracepoints are more intrusive than hardware tracepoints because of the overhead added by the interrupts being used. Kinetis Cortex M0+ core does not support software tracepoints.
This chapter consists of the following topics: