TotalView Users Guide - CI Wiki

Figure 100: Root Window for a
Cell Program
Debugging IBM Cell Broadband Engine Programs
The second step is to load the executable into the SPE context. The final
step is to run the SPU executable.
PPU and SPU Executable Naming
If your SPU programs are embedded into your PPU program, TotalView
names the SPU program in the following way:
ppu.exe(spu.exe@offset)
ppu.exe is the name of the PPU image containing the SPU executable and offset
is the file offset within ppu.exe. spu.exe is the name of the SPU executable.
If, however, the SPU executable is opened at runtime using libspe, the SPU
name is shown as:
spu.exe
Thread IDs
Another difference is the TotalView TID (Thread ID). An SPU thread has a
negative number. This differentiates it from the positive TIDs used for PPU
threads. Negative TIDs on other architectures have a different meaning. On
these other architectures, a negative TID represents a manager thread that
is performing an activity for which you have little interest. (See Figure 100.)
All SPU threads can be run synchronously or asynchronously. Like all
threads within TotalView, you can use the CLI to place SPU threads in a
named group and control these named groups separately.
Breakpoints
An SPU thread share group shares one characteristic of a process share
group: breakpoints can be shared across the threads. That is, when you
plant a breakpoint in one thread in the share group, TotalView can plant it
in all members. (See Figure 101 on page 142.))
Breakpoints can be in a pending state; that is, if TotalView cannot assign a
breakpoint to an address because an SPU executable is not yet loaded,
TotalView will wait until it can set the breakpoint.
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