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<title>OpenOCD User&rsquo;s Guide: About</title>

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<a name="About"></a>
<div class="header">
<p>
Next: <a href="Developers.html#Developers" accesskey="n" rel="next">Developers</a>, Previous: <a href="index.html#Top" accesskey="p" rel="previous">Top</a>, Up: <a href="index.html#Top" accesskey="u" rel="up">Top</a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="OpenOCD-Concept-Index.html#OpenOCD-Concept-Index" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
</div>
<hr>
<a name="About-1"></a>
<h2 class="unnumbered">About</h2>
<a name="index-about"></a>

<p>OpenOCD was created by Dominic Rath as part of a diploma thesis written at the
University of Applied Sciences Augsburg (<a href="http://www.fh-augsburg.de">http://www.fh-augsburg.de</a>).
Since that time, the project has grown into an active open-source project,
supported by a diverse community of software and hardware developers from
around the world.
</p>
<a name="What-is-OpenOCD_003f"></a>
<h3 class="section">What is OpenOCD?</h3>
<a name="index-TAP"></a>
<a name="index-JTAG"></a>

<p>The Open On-Chip Debugger (OpenOCD) aims to provide debugging,
in-system programming and boundary-scan testing for embedded target
devices.
</p>
<p>It does so with the assistance of a <em>debug adapter</em>, which is
a small hardware module which helps provide the right kind of
electrical signaling to the target being debugged. These are
required since the debug host (on which OpenOCD runs) won&rsquo;t
usually have native support for such signaling, or the connector
needed to hook up to the target.
</p>
<p>Such debug adapters support one or more <em>transport</em> protocols,
each of which involves different electrical signaling (and uses
different messaging protocols on top of that signaling). There
are many types of debug adapter, and little uniformity in what
they are called. (There are also product naming differences.)
</p>
<p>These adapters are sometimes packaged as discrete dongles, which
may generically be called <em>hardware interface dongles</em>.
Some development boards also integrate them directly, which may
let the development board can be directly connected to the debug
host over USB (and sometimes also to power it over USB).
</p>
<p>For example, a <em>JTAG Adapter</em> supports JTAG
signaling, and is used to communicate
with JTAG (IEEE 1149.1) compliant TAPs on your target board.
A <em>TAP</em> is a &ldquo;Test Access Port&rdquo;, a module which processes
special instructions and data. TAPs are daisy-chained within and
between chips and boards. JTAG supports debugging and boundary
scan operations.
</p>
<p>There are also <em>SWD Adapters</em> that support Serial Wire Debug (SWD)
signaling to communicate with some newer ARM cores, as well as debug
adapters which support both JTAG and SWD transports. SWD only supports
debugging, whereas JTAG also supports boundary scan operations.
</p>
<p>For some chips, there are also <em>Programming Adapters</em> supporting
special transports used only to write code to flash memory, without
support for on-chip debugging or boundary scan.
(At this writing, OpenOCD does not support such non-debug adapters.)
</p>

<p><b>Dongles:</b> OpenOCD currently supports many types of hardware dongles: USB
based, parallel port based, and other standalone boxes that run
OpenOCD internally. See <a href="Debug-Adapter-Hardware.html#Debug-Adapter-Hardware">Debug Adapter Hardware</a>.
</p>
<p><b>GDB Debug:</b> It allows ARM7 (ARM7TDMI and ARM720t), ARM9 (ARM920T,
ARM922T, ARM926EJ&ndash;S, ARM966E&ndash;S), XScale (PXA25x, IXP42x) and
Cortex-M3 (Stellaris LM3, ST STM32 and Energy Micro EFM32) based cores to be
debugged via the GDB protocol.
</p>
<p><b>Flash Programing:</b> Flash writing is supported for external CFI
compatible NOR flashes (Intel and AMD/Spansion command set) and several
internal flashes (LPC1700, LPC1800, LPC2000, LPC4300, AT91SAM7, AT91SAM3U,
STR7x, STR9x, LM3, STM32x and EFM32). Preliminary support for various NAND flash
controllers (LPC3180, Orion, S3C24xx, more) controller is included.
</p>
<a name="OpenOCD-Web-Site"></a>
<h3 class="section">OpenOCD Web Site</h3>

<p>The OpenOCD web site provides the latest public news from the community:
</p>
<p><a href="http://openocd.sourceforge.net/">http://openocd.sourceforge.net/</a>
</p>
<a name="Latest-User_0027s-Guide_003a"></a>
<h3 class="section">Latest User&rsquo;s Guide:</h3>

<p>The user&rsquo;s guide you are now reading may not be the latest one
available. A version for more recent code may be available.
Its HTML form is published regularly at:
</p>
<p><a href="http://openocd.sourceforge.net/doc/html/index.html">http://openocd.sourceforge.net/doc/html/index.html</a>
</p>
<p>PDF form is likewise published at:
</p>
<p><a href="http://openocd.sourceforge.net/doc/pdf/openocd.pdf">http://openocd.sourceforge.net/doc/pdf/openocd.pdf</a>
</p>
<a name="OpenOCD-User_0027s-Forum"></a>
<h3 class="section">OpenOCD User&rsquo;s Forum</h3>

<p>There is an OpenOCD forum (phpBB) hosted by SparkFun,
which might be helpful to you. Note that if you want
anything to come to the attention of developers, you
should post it to the OpenOCD Developer Mailing List
instead of this forum.
</p>
<p><a href="http://forum.sparkfun.com/viewforum.php?f=18">http://forum.sparkfun.com/viewforum.php?f=18</a>
</p>
<a name="OpenOCD-User_0027s-Mailing-List"></a>
<h3 class="section">OpenOCD User&rsquo;s Mailing List</h3>

<p>The OpenOCD User Mailing List provides the primary means of
communication between users:
</p>
<p><a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/openocd-user">https://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/openocd-user</a>
</p>
<a name="OpenOCD-IRC"></a>
<h3 class="section">OpenOCD IRC</h3>

<p>Support can also be found on irc:
<a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/openocd">irc://irc.freenode.net/openocd</a>
</p>
<hr>
<div class="header">
<p>
Next: <a href="Developers.html#Developers" accesskey="n" rel="next">Developers</a>, Previous: <a href="index.html#Top" accesskey="p" rel="previous">Top</a>, Up: <a href="index.html#Top" accesskey="u" rel="up">Top</a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="OpenOCD-Concept-Index.html#OpenOCD-Concept-Index" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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