Danville Signal - Your Partner for SHARC-based DSP Boards, Hardware and Systems

Danville Signal Authorized Reseller for Analog Devices Development Tools

Software development on all DSPs can be a time consuming process. In our view, an in-circuit emulator (ICE) is a very inexpensive tool that always pays for itself very quickly. All ADI SHARC and Blackfin processors have a JTAG port for software debugging. Unless you have a severe space limitation, we suggest you add a JTAG connection to all your hardware designs. Danville DSP boards use ether the standard ADI JTAG 2x7 header or a smaller 2mm 2x8 header for JTAG connections.

If you are using Visual DSP for software development, there are three good choices for emulation:

• Analog Devices HP USB ICE
• Analog Devices USB ICE
• Analog Devices EZ-KIT Debugger

The HP USB ICE and the USB ICE support the entire Blackfin and SHARC processor families. They are both well integrated into Visual DSP and require a full Visual DSP license to operate (or a test drive license during the first 90 days). You can set breakpoints, modify and examine memory and register locations and single step through programs in an easy non-intrusive manner. 

The primary difference between the two standalone emulators is that the HP USB ICE operates about 10 times faster and supports background telemetry, a non-intrusive method for exchanging data between the host and target application without affecting the target system's real-time characteristics.

The third method of emulation is with an EZ Kit debugger. Analog Devices provides this debugger on their EZ-KIT Lite evaluation boards as a cost effective method to learn more about their DSP processors. These boards include an evaluation copy of Visual DSP++ that allows you to write and debug DSP applications without necessarily requiring a full featured Visual DSP license and a HP USB or USB ICE.

The EZ-KITs are great learning tools to get you started, but when you are done writing your application, you still have just an EZ-KIT.

Danville is pleased to announce that we are the only third-party licensed to incorporate the EZ-KIT debugger on SHARC based DSP boards. You can find the EZ-KIT Debugger on the ICE versions of our dspstak DSP Engines.

From a Visual DSP++ point of view, the dspstak emulates an EZ-KIT. The big difference is that the dspstak is also a production target. You can develop your code using the Visual DSP tool set and then use the same boards for production. We also have versions that omit the debugger for production cost savings.

Learn more about our dspstak™ 21369 Family of DSP Engines with ICE here.

Danville Signal is an authorized reseller for the Analog Devices Development Tools, including Visual DSP++ 5.0 for the SHARC and Blackfin line of DSP processors and the emulators. You can buy these tools directly from ADI or one of their distributors, but as a smaller company, we would certainly appreciate your business.

Purchasing Information

You'll find three versions of Visual DSP++ (for SHARC, Blackfin and ADSP-21xx) and the USB Emulators available now in our online E-Store.

If you are interested in another version of these tools, please contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and we can assist you.