The K series and L series of the Kinetis target have different cores, trace modules, and raw trace format. However, the results available in the Software Analysis view look identical.
The K series of the Kinetis target has the following features:
- Cortex M4 core
- ETM and ITM trace with an internal ETB buffer (2Kb) located in RAM
- DWT module for trace control/HW Tracepoints with four address comparators and a large variety of resource counters
The L series of the Kinetis target has the following features:
- Cortex M0+ core
- Micro Trace Buffer (MTB) trace with an internal buffer, which is configurable up to 32Kb. MTB is located in SRAM. MTB trace is less compressed than ETM trace having a ratio of 128 branches for 1Kb of buffer. Like ETM, MTB also supports automatic and continuous trace.
- DWT module for trace control/HW Tracepoints with two address comparators and no resource counter.
The differences between Kinetis Cortex M4 core and Cortex M0+ core with respect to ETM and MTB are:
- MTB allows you to configure buffer size while ETB size is fixed.
- MTB shares the same SRAM memory as program and data, therefore the linker control file is updated with a new section for MTB so that trace collection does not interfere with program or data.
- MTB trace is not encoded with relative addresses (as ETM trace is), so it does not require SYNC information. Therefore, in the automatic mode, none of the existing trace will be lost doe to missing SYNC information.
- The K series supports real time trace collection by an external probe due to its TPIU module. There are probes with large internal buffers which can collect this external trace, for example, Segger J-Trace with 2-16Mb internal buffer; P&E Multilink Trace with 128 Mb internal buffer. The L series does not support this feature.