STMicroelectronics "ST-LINK/V2" - “In-circuit debugger/programmer for STM8 and STM32”, “STM32 applications use the USB full speed interface to communicate with ATOLLIC, IAR or KEIL Integrated Development Environments”.
The outdated STMicroelectronics "ST-LINK" - “In-circuit debugger and programmer for STM8 and STM32 MCUs”, “STM32 applications use the USB full speed interface to communicate with ATOLLIC, IAR or KEIL Integrated Development Environments”.
For software development of embedded realtime applications ( e.g. motor control ), you need to have monitor data in realtime.
It is not suitable to work with a software debugger which stops the CPU/MPU at a breakpoint, to set a variable of the embedded software. If you do so, you might ruin your connected hardware by a system crash caused by uncontrolled device operation ( e.g. of a motor, motor control electronics based on IGBT, Thyristors,... ).
Tracing is a useful development technology to monitor embedded data and especially MCU data in realtime.
The CPU core must support tracing ( e.g. ARM Cortex M3 supports tracing, ARM Cortex M0 doesn't support tracing ).
The physical CPU as produced by the chip manufacturer ( e.g. Atmel, Freescale, TI,..) must support tracing. Especially there must be the right pins at the chip package which support tracing.
The physical ( evaluation ) board must support tracing, i.e. the trace signal from the MPU pins must be available on the board at a debugging connector. There are many affordable embedded evaluation boards and embedded demo boards, especially giftware by the MCU chip manufacturers, which doen´t support tracing .
The physical interface connector of the board and of the hardware debugger must support tracing. The traditional 2×7 JTAG interface doesn't support tracing .