In addition to monitoring the critical CPU interfaces, monitoring various events in the system like interrupts and peripheral activity is another important requirement for any real-time system. All the key system events like interrupts, DMA triggers and important peripheral events are brought into the ERAD IP. Hence, these can be time-stamped, counted and measured with relation to the CPU activity. Using state machines in CLB, it is possible to further define sequences of operations and events. Counter block allows the system events, as well as CPU activity, to be measured and analyzed with reference to other events, too.

Simple examples of linking CPU activity and system events are:

• Completion of CPU software and PWM output generation within a specified time from an ADC data capture event
• Reception of a CAN message periodically within a maximum specified window of time

Counter supports a unique start stop mode, where in counter records the CPU cycles spent between any start and stop event. Moreover there is additional hardware which continuously keeps a record of the maximum count value reached by this counter across multiple start/stop iterations. Importantly, all the above mentioned metrics are achieved with zero software overhead.

Some of the unique benefits rendered by this counter are:

• Profiling code segments
• Temporal relationship between System events and CPU transactions
• Counting duration between specified memory accesses (Reads and Writes) and system events
• Counting of system events (like interrupts, CLA events, and so forth)
• Counting duration between system events
• Measuring the maximum time spent in between a pair of events over multiple iterations with zero software overhead, as shown in the examples to follow.

List of events that can be profiled by SEC (F28004x) are:

• PIE interrupts to CPU
• CLA Interrupt signals
• EBC generated events
• SEC generated events (SEC events from one SEC can be sent across to another)