Renesas RX support & J-Link compatibility

J-Link fully supports super-fast, direct debugging via JTAG on Renesas RX devices.

Overview

All that is needed to use J-Link with a Renesas RX MCU, is an RX Adapter which is available for J-Link, J-Link Pro, J-Link Ultra+, J-Link EDU and any other licensed J-Link compatible debug probe. The required software can be downloaded from SEGGER's website and used free of charge.

Compatible MCUs

J-Link supports various groups of the RX series devices. For a detailed list of supported devices, please refer to the supported devices list. J-Link supports the JTAG interface as well as the FINE interface for debugging RX based devices.

Supported IDEs

J-Link is compatible¹ with the Renesas E1 emulator, all features supported by the IDE + E1 can also be used with J-Link. Boot mode and programming of the user boot area are currently not supported by J-Link. J-Link has been tested with the following IDEs:

IAR EWRX
Renesas e²Studio

Key features

Supports direct download into flash memory
Supports software breakpoints in flash memory (Unlimited Flash Breakpoints) [More..]
Seamless integration into the IAR Embedded Workbench & Renesas e²Studio IDE
On-chip trace support
Virtual UART support (C2E / E2C support)
All kinds of events are supported (Execution break, data access, trace break, combination/sequentation of events)

J-Link vs Renesas E1

Advantages of J-Link

Higher speed
First of all, J-Link is much faster. We achieve (at the time of writing, using the current versions of both the J-Link and E1 software) a speed of approximately 2-6 times the speed of the E1. This is true for basically all operations, incl. download to flash, setting of breakpoints in flash as well as startup and typical debugging operations like single stepping or memory read operations.
Smart breakpoint management
Flash breakpoints are much faster on J-Link than on E1 or E20, but because of the large flash sectors of up to 128KB, setting or removing flash breakpoints is still time consuming. J-Link uses different techniques to minimize the amount of times a flash breakpoint is set or removed. Some of these techniques are: Instruction set simulation, use of hardware breakpoints where possible, dynamic conversion of breakpoint types, flash caching, CRC checking and others
SDK available
You can write your own application and control an RX600 series MCU using J-Link
Same probe for ARM and RX600 CPUs: No need to switch debug probes!
Control panel allows monitoring of operation64-bit OS supported
J-Link commander: Free Command line utility for J-Link
J-Flash: Allows using J-Link for production purposes

Production Programming

The built-in Flash loader can be used to program the flash of supported RX devices directly from within the debugger or via J-Link Commander. This allows using J-Link for flash programming of smaller production batches. To program the flash via J-Link Commander, a sequence of commands such as the following can be used:

speed 12000                       // Select High JTAG speed
h                                 // Halt target CPU
exec device=RX600                 // Select correct device (RX600, RX62N, RX62T) to enable flash programming
loadbin C:\file.bin,0xFFF80000    // Load program into flash
r                                 // Reset target CPU (not required if all you want to do is program flash)
g                                 // Start target CPU (not required if all you want to do is program flash)
q                                 // Quit

The command can be stored in a Commander script file, which can be executed as follows: JLink.exe.

Available J-Link RX Hardware

J-Link RX adapter

All that is needed to use J-Link with a Renesas RX100, RX200 or RX600 series MCU, is a regular J-Link + the 20-pin to 14-pin RX adapter.

More information