[TruHobbyist]

ICE != IDE

When you develop the hardware around the CPU and when you develop an Operating System you need to debug it. ICE is one of the tool that is for that. It stands for In-circuit emulation. It's a hardware debugger. I can't imagine the development of a complex hardware like the AlphaStation with a complex OS for a complex CPU like Alpha without an ICE, but I can't find any ICE for Alpha, whereas I own and have used several ICEs for MIPS.

Hi,

I think the availability of an ice for a CPU or a MCU implementing that CPU depends on a series of factors that are totally unrelated to the fact that the CPU and OSes that run on it were highly integrated from a user perspective.

Furthermore, I strongly believe it's far easier to find this kind of hardware debugging devices for all kind of MCUs (read: zilog, intel, arm and MIPS cpus) and that's not precisely a market ALPHAS are/were used for. Just compare the history of MIPS and ALPHA CPUs.

Nonetheless, for developing an OS you don't need this kind of debugging. I can say for sure not even for the first/lowest layer of an OS (interrupt routines). All you need are the architectural specs of the hardware components you're are going to use.


Kind regards,
Tru

EDITED: typos