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Security Software—Debug Component Architecture Overview
Intel
®
EP80579 Software for Security Applications on Intel
®
QuickAssist Technology
PG August 2009
30 Order Number: 320183-004US
6.0 Debug Component Architecture Overview
6.1 What’s New in this Chapter
• No updates in this release.
6.2 Overview
Debugging an application when problems occur can be difficult, especially when
integrating with third-party software. To ease this burden, all of the EP80579 security
software which runs in the Linux kernel is provided as source code, thereby facilitating
debug as part of an application. In addition, the software provides mechanisms to
support debug of the acceleration access layers and firmware modules. These
mechanisms will help the end user in identifying and diagnosing the fault, whether they
are due to defects in the software itself, or in the usage of this by the application.
As part of this debug infrastructure, the following debug features are supported:
• Version Information
• Liveness Detection
• Data Structure Dump (not supported in the current software release)
• Software Error Notification (SEN)
Each of these features is described in more detail below.
6.3 Version Information
To debug an issue, it is important to know the version of the software which is running.
This version information consists of the following:
• Package version information that applies to a specific complete software package
• Individual software component version information for all the software components
that are contained in the software package
The version information will contain the package/component name, the major number,
minor number and patch number of the release.
6.4 Liveness Detection
Liveness detection is a mechanism to allow client applications to determine the runtime
health of the various “threads of execution” that run within the Intel
®
EP80579
Integrated Processor. These may be threads running within the kernel on the IA core,
or on the ASU. The client can at anytime query the “liveness” of all such threads of
execution. The software will list all the threads of execution in the system, along with
their state (dead or alive).