IAR adds power analysis to Embedded Workbench

IAR Systems has incorporated its power debug and analysis tools within IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM to help software developers minimise power consumption.

The tools provide the capability to correlate current sampling alongside program execution, allowing analysis of the software's influence on power consumption and providing developers with the means to optimise source code to minimise power consumption.

The power measurements can be visualised in various ways in IAR Embedded Workbench.

In its simplest form a power log window displays the measured current and the time and location of the program counter when it was sampled.

This gives the developer detailed insight into an application's power consumption.

An overview is provided as a graph of the power consumption presented in the timeline window in IAR Embedded Workbench, where the call stack, interrupt activity and variable values can be displayed simultaneously.

This allows power consumption to be mapped against key events in the program's execution and the developer can see what events trigger higher power consumption.

Power profiling is done on function level, letting the developer know how much power is consumed during the execution of each function and what the average current is during its execution.

The power profiling utility provides insight to where efforts should be made to optimise for lower power consumption.

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