Appeal No. 2002-1672
Application No. 09/412,124
The disclosed invention relates to the tracing of program
code execution in which changes in instruction flow from a normal
code execution stream are monitored. More particularly,
synchronizing events are periodically generated and sent to a
trace acquisition buffer enabling the tracing of instructions
before and after a triggering event.
Claim 1 is illustrative of the invention and reads as
follows:
1. A circuit for tracing program execution within a
processor, said circuit comprising:
circuitry for acquiring instructions occurring before
and after a triggering event; and
circuitry for providing said acquired instructions
externally from said processor.
The Examiner relies on the following prior art:
Nakano 5,146,586 Sep. 08, 1992
Mehring 5,675,729 Oct. 07, 1997
(filed Aug. 19, 1996)
Argade et al. (Argade) 5,724,505 Mar. 03, 1998
(filed May 15, 1996)
Bridges et al. (Bridges) 5,809,293 Sep. 15, 1998
(filed Jul. 29, 1994)
Baird et al. (Baird) 5,848,264 Dec. 08, 1998
(filed Oct. 25, 1996)
Circello et al. (Circello) 5,964,893 Oct. 12, 1999
(filed Aug. 30, 1995)
2
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