Structure and method for monitoring an internal cache

摘要

A structure and a method are provided to bring internal signals of an integrated circuit to the external pins for monitoring purpose. In one embodiment, the signals on an internal bus between an on-chip cache and a CPU in a microprocessor are provided on the microprocessor's pins for a bidirectional data/address bus, when the bidirectional data/address bus is not used for data/address bus transactions with the main memory or the peripheral input/output devices. In this embodiment, reserved pins are used to selectively enable the address/data bus for bringing out the signals of the on-chip bus.