Analog Devices, NEC Electronics, Tensilica, and Texas Instruments have joined the companies in the growing industry effort to address multi-processor debugging of embedded systems – they are the newest additions to the 22 member companies of the Nexus 5001 Forum, which is aiming to drive adoption of the Nexus Standard.

The Nexus Standard (IEEE-ISTO Nexus 5001) is an embedded processor development tool interface that is meant to help design engineers identify software-level and hardware-level problems. The Nexus 5001 standard claims to be the only open debugging standard in the world, addressing the emerging multi-processor debugging problems of embedded systems with a common interface.

By using a standard debug protocol available from multiple chip makers, the forum claims that companies can reduce time and expense when migrating between architectures.

“The ability to have real-time visibility and control of multiple embedded processor cores is only one area that the Nexus Forum has been striving for since its beginning,” explained Ron Stence, senior systems engineer for Freescale Semiconductor.

Nexus aims to allow for re-use of development tools and directly supports multi-core embedded processors to reduce development time and resource investment for embedded systems.

Establishing the Nexus Standard is expected to allow engineers and programmers to find and fix problems with their systems using emulators, debuggers, logic analysers, hardware-in-the-loop and workstations to control embedded processors in real time, the organisation said.

Standardisation also ensures that microprocessor systems can re-use diagnostic equipment across multiple architectures and design cycles.

Other forum members include Ford Motor Company, Freescale Semiconductor, General Motors, Hitex Development Tools, Infineon Technologies, Motorola, STMicroelectronics and Wind River Systems, among others.