No Trace Events Appear

Solution

• Check if the configuration has the necessary trace sources enabled.

• Check if the firmware to trace has tracing to North Peak (NPK) enabled.

• Ensure that Configure target during capture start and stop box in the Trace Capture view is checked and restart trace capture. If this option is disabled, the viewer skips any trace configuration.

• Select the Apply Start Trace Configuration option from the Trace Capture view context menu and restart trace capture:

  

• If you are using the target simulation, you need to determine if a problem lies with Simics® simulator or System Trace. Check the *-npk-bin.log (for example, tgl-npk-bin.log) file in the workspace folder of the Simics® simulator:

  • If the size of the file is 0 bytes, the problem is most likely caused by the simulation or the setup of the Simics simulator.

  • If the size of the file is larger than 0 bytes, the problem is most likely caused by the Simics simulator setup or System Trace.

Event Trace for Windows* (ETW): Error in Start Trace Capture

Solution

Make sure that the Intel® Trace Hub device is displayed in Windows Device Manager. If it is not displayed, set the configuration in BIOS to enable the Trace Hub device.

Memory Pool Configuration is not Valid for Current OS

The following message is returned in the console:

[ERROR] [TRACE] Memory pool configuration is not valid for current OS

Reason

On Linux* OS, sysfs entry (/sys/module/usbcore/parameters/usbfs_​memory_​mb) controls the maximal chunk size, which can be scheduled for USB bulk transfer by kernel. Decoder will adjust size of chunks that exceed value to maximum possible (in this case, value from sysfs) and continue execution. This might result in significant performance degradation and data losses or back pressure.

Solution

As decoder cannot adjust sysfs value without root permissions, you must have compatible OS and memory pool settings. For example, set maximal chuck size to 128Mb by executing echo 128 | sudo tee /sys/module/usbcore/parameters/usbfs_​memory_​mb.

EarlyBoot: Corrupt Message (too short)

The following message is shown in the “Summary” field after decoding:

Corrupt message (too short) raw:

Reason

EarlyBoot usecase is running through multiple target power cycles. There is no way to tell target to flush the trace buffer and though last messages up to alignment bound might be lost or corrupted.

Solution

This is an EarlyBoot data collection limitation; it should not affect user experience. You can ignore this error.

Advanced: Test Your Target

Before starting trace, you can verify that basic features on the target are working correctly and the target is ready for tracing.

Once the target connection is established, open the Trace Capture view, click View Menu and select Trace Hardware Tests.

The following dialog opens:

Select the tests you want to run from the list:

Connection Test

Checks that the connection to the probe is available.

Halt/Go

Checks that the platform can halt/go correctly. An error here indicates that some sources, e.g. AET, may not be configurable.

VISA to Intel® Trace Hub Performance Counters

This is the Intel® Trace Hub internal check that verifies the validity of the hardware VISA observation paths to Intel® Trace Hub are able to be configured and that performance counters are usable.

Access Method Test

Tests the various access methods that are supported. If an access method fails, it could be that some trace sources may not be configurable.

IA FW BIOS check

Check to see that BIOS configured the Intel® Trace Hub hardware correctly. If this test fails, it means that BIOS did not setup Intel® Trace Hub and the user should enable Intel® Trace Hub in the BIOS menus.

To start the tests click the Run Tests button on the upper-right. The status of the test run is indicated by a progress bar:

The Status column indicates the test results. For more descriptive status messages, check the Console Log:

Lost XX packets over YY (traffic exceeded Intel® Trace Hub bandwith limit)

The following message is shown in the “Summary” field after decoding:

Lost 242 raw MIPI STP packets over 295.573ns (traffic exceeded Intel® Trace Hub bandwith limit)

Reason

Bandiwidth of collected trace data exceeds bandwidth limit supported by DCI to USB trace technology

Solution

• Try streaming with USB3 instead of USB2 if applicable

• Try to reduce amount of streaming data: for example, deselect unneeded cores for Architectural Event Traces (AET) if applicable