System and method for setting and executing breakpoints

摘要

A system and method for setting and executing breakpoints utilized for debugging program code. A user interface (UI) stores breakpoint addresses in a breakpoint table within a central processing unit (CPU). Multiple breakpoint addresses may be stored in the table as a range of addresses in a single entry. A flag indicates whether each stored address or address range is a physical or virtual address. When executing the program code on the CPU, an instruction core requests from an instruction cache, an instruction associated with a particular address. The cache first determines from the breakpoint table within the CPU whether there is a breakpoint associated with the particular address. If so, the cache returns control to the UI. Otherwise, the cache goes out to a coherency controller to fetch the instruction from memory.