Platform Insight & System Tuning

Reducing the time it takes to go from pre-silicon to production can be an enormous competitive advantage. The Intel® System Bring-up Toolkit delivers what developers need to accelerate system bring-up and optimization—whether you’re a device manufacturer, system integrator, or IoT software provider.

This collection of debug, trace, and power and performance analysis tools allow developers to quickly debug and analyze the entire platform, including:

• Hardware
• Firmware, UEFI, BIOS
• Operating system kernels, device drivers, and more

Regardless of whether you’re in pre- or post-silicon development, the results are:

• Faster time to market
• Optimized performance and power or thermal behavior
• Increased efficiency and productivity

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Get the Toolkit

Access to this toolkit requires a signed corporate Confidential Non-Disclosure Agreement (CNDA). Once Intel verifies your CNDA, you will receive an email with access instructions.

Request Access

Existing Intel System Bring-up Toolkit customers can download the software from the Intel® Registration Center (sign in required).

Download

Note If you do not see the components after you sign in, you may not have CNDA access.

Features

System Debug
Simplify system bring-up, validation, and platform testing by resolving issues quickly with deep hardware and software insights to ensure platform stability and market success.

Power Analysis
Quickly measure how your system is operating with respect to power by correlating key hardware and software metrics to optimize idle, battery life, active power, and thermal behavior.

Performance Analysis
Pinpoint code-tuning opportunities with a performance profiler that delivers a deep, comprehensive analysis of system performance characteristics to ensure faster cross-architecture performance.

Intel® SoC Watch

Use this in-depth energy analysis command-line tool to quickly collect metrics that can be used to analyze a system's power and thermal behavior. There are three main workflows for power analysis:

• Collect data directly on a Windows*, Linux*, or Android* target system using this command-line tool and analyze the results.
• Use Intel® SoC Watch to collect data on the command line. Then, import the results to Intel® VTune™ Profiler for visualization and a detailed inspection of energy consumption and thermal behavior over time.
• Use Intel VTune Profiler directly to start, collect, and analyze power and thermal data, and then correlate it with performance data for deep insight into the application and platform.

Intel® System Debugger

Speed up system bring-up and validation of hardware and system software using in-depth debug and trace of BIOS and UEFI, firmware, device drivers, operating system kernels, and more.

System Debug

To help quickly resolve complex system issues, this feature supports in-depth debugging of system software. The Eclipse* integrated source-line debugger enables deep analysis of BIOS and UEFI code, system-on-a-chip (SoC) peripheral registers, operating system kernels, device drivers, and more. Use the tool with physical hardware or with Simics® software as a simulation target to get to market faster with more reliable systems.

System Trace 

This feature traces events on Intel architecture from various hardware, firmware, and other software sources. You can collect, export, and analyze trace data collected by Intel® Trace Hub from sources like: 

• BIOS 
• Power Management Controller (PMC)
• Intel® Converged Security and Management Engine (Intel® CSME)
• Architecture Event Trace (AET) 
• Event Tracing for Windows (ETW)

Events can be extracted via several mechanisms, including JTAG, system memory, or through a USB connection. Analyzing Intel Trace Hub events from multiple platform sources helps you determine root causes of bugs quickly. 

Intel® Debug Extensions for WinDbg

These extensions help accelerate platform bring-up, and Windows kernel and device driver development and validation by enhancing Windows Debugger (WinDbg) with JTAG debug and trace capabilities.

Intel® VTune™ Profiler

In minutes instead of hours, find and optimize application, system, and system configuration performance bottlenecks across CPUs and GPUs. The data collector aggregates cross-system profiling data using low overhead. Boost single and multithreaded performance, memory access, energy efficiency, caching, and storage.

• Analyze application performance across CPUs and GPUs. 
• Profile code written in SYCL*, C, C++, C#, Fortran, OpenCL™ code, Python*, Google Go* programming language, Java*, Assembly, or any combination.
• Collect coarse-grained, system-wide data for an extended period or detailed results mapped directly to application source code.
• Optimize performance while avoiding power- and thermal-related throttling.  

Platform Debug & Tracing

Tool: Intel® System Debugger 

Note A nondisclosure agreement (NDA) is required for these guides.

User Guide

• System Debug
• System Trace
  
• Crash Log
  
• Intel® Debug Extensions for WinDbg
  
• Intelligent Debug & Validation Tool (IDV Tool)

Power Profiling

Tool: Intel® SoC Watch

• Get Started
• User Guide

Performance Profiling

Tool: Intel VTune Profiler

• Get Started
• User Guide

Hardware probes for system debug:

• Intel® In-Target Probe (Intel® ITP) XDP3
• Intel® Silicon View Technology (Intel® SVT) Closed Chassis Adapter (CCA, also known as SVTCCA or BSSB)
• Intel SVT DCI DbC2/3 USB cable for closed chassis debug

The hardware probes can be purchased from third-party vendors or theDesign-In Tools Store.

To submit questions, problems, and other technical support issues, use theOnline Service Center.