Patent ID: 7051237

Claim:
A program-controlled unit, comprising: debug resources using trace information including given information selected from the group consisting of selected addresses, data signals, and control signals; and an output for outputting the trace information to trace a course of operations occurring within the program-controlled unit; said debug resources monitoring whether a predefined change in a level of at least one predefined bit of the given information in the trace information has taken place; said debug resources performing an operation selected from the group consisting of starting to generate the trace information as a result of the monitoring and stopping to generate the trace information as a result of the monitoring; said debug resources including a comparator logic device for obtaining a result by checking if there is a predefined change in the level of the at least one predefined bit of the given information being supplied to said debug resources; said debug resources including a message generator generating a message including the trace information that will be output; said debug resources outputting the message; said message generator operating as a function of the result obtained by said comparator logic device; and said message generator causing at least one event of the group consisting of: an individual message to be output if the result obtained by said comparator logic device signals that a condition being checked by said comparator logic device is fulfilled; a specific number of messages to be output if the result obtained by said comparator logic device signals that a condition being checked by said comparator logic device is fulfilled; an indeterminate number of messages to be output if the result obtained by said comparator logic device signals that a condition being checked by said comparator logic device is fulfilled; stopping messages from being output if the result obtained by said comparator logic device signals that a condition being checked by said comparator logic device is fulfilled; an individual message to be output if the result obtained by said comparator logic device signals that a condition being checked by said comparator logic device is not fulfilled; a specific number of messages to be output if the result obtained by said comparator logic device signals that a condition being checked by said comparator logic device is not fulfilled; an indeterminate number of messages to be output if the result obtained by said comparator logic device signals that a condition being checked by said comparator logic device is not fulfilled; and stopping messages from being output if the result obtained by said comparator logic device signals that a condition being checked by said comparator logic device is not fulfilled.