

10 TAP Declaration

Test Access Ports (TAPs) are the core of JTAG. TAPs serve many roles, including:

OpenOCD must know about the active TAPs on your board(s). Setting up the TAPs is the core task of your configuration files. Once those TAPs are set up, you can pass their names to code which sets up CPUs and exports them as GDB targets, probes flash memory, performs low-level JTAG operations, and more.

10.1 Scan Chains

TAPs are part of a hardware scan chain, which is a daisy chain of TAPs. They also need to be added to OpenOCD’s software mirror of that hardware list, giving each member a name and associating other data with it. Simple scan chains, with a single TAP, are common in systems with a single microcontroller or microprocessor. More complex chips may have several TAPs internally. Very complex scan chains might have a dozen or more TAPs: several in one chip, more in the next, and connecting to other boards with their own chips and TAPs.

You can display the list with the scan_chain command. (Don’t confuse this with the list displayed by the targets command, presented in the next chapter. That only displays TAPs for CPUs which are configured as debugging targets.) Here’s what the scan chain might look like for a chip more than one TAP:

   TapName            Enabled IdCode     Expected   IrLen IrCap IrMask
 0 omap5912.dsp          Y    0x03df1d81 0x03df1d81    38 0x01  0x03
 1 omap5912.arm          Y    0x0692602f 0x0692602f     4 0x01  0x0f
 2 omap5912.unknown      Y    0x00000000 0x00000000     8 0x01  0x03

OpenOCD can detect some of that information, but not all of it. See Autoprobing. Unfortunately, those TAPs can’t always be autoconfigured, because not all devices provide good support for that. JTAG doesn’t require supporting IDCODE instructions, and chips with JTAG routers may not link TAPs into the chain until they are told to do so.

The configuration mechanism currently supported by OpenOCD requires explicit configuration of all TAP devices using jtag newtap commands, as detailed later in this chapter. A command like this would declare one tap and name it chip1.cpu:

jtag newtap chip1 cpu -irlen 4 -expected-id 0x3ba00477

Each target configuration file lists the TAPs provided by a given chip. Board configuration files combine all the targets on a board, and so forth. Note that the order in which TAPs are declared is very important. That declaration order must match the order in the JTAG scan chain, both inside a single chip and between them. See FAQ TAP Order.

For example, the ST Microsystems STR912 chip has three separate TAPs5. To configure those taps, target/str912.cfg includes commands something like this:

jtag newtap str912 flash ... params ...
jtag newtap str912 cpu ... params ...
jtag newtap str912 bs ... params ...

Actual config files typically use a variable such as $_CHIPNAME instead of literals like str912, to support more than one chip of each type. See Config File Guidelines.

Command: jtag names

Returns the names of all current TAPs in the scan chain. Use jtag cget or jtag tapisenabled to examine attributes and state of each TAP.

foreach t [jtag names] {
    puts [format "TAP: %s\n" $t]
Command: scan_chain

Displays the TAPs in the scan chain configuration, and their status. The set of TAPs listed by this command is fixed by exiting the OpenOCD configuration stage, but systems with a JTAG router can enable or disable TAPs dynamically.

10.2 TAP Names

When TAP objects are declared with jtag newtap, a is created for the TAP, combining the name of a module (usually a chip) and a label for the TAP. For example: xilinx.tap, str912.flash, omap3530.jrc, dm6446.dsp, or stm32.cpu. Many other commands use that to manipulate or refer to the TAP. For example, CPU configuration uses the name, as does declaration of NAND or NOR flash banks.

The components of a dotted name should follow “C” symbol name rules: start with an alphabetic character, then numbers and underscores are OK; while others (including dots!) are not.

10.3 TAP Declaration Commands

Command: jtag newtap chipname tapname configparams...

Declares a new TAP with the dotted name chipname.tapname, and configured according to the various configparams.

The chipname is a symbolic name for the chip. Conventionally target config files use $_CHIPNAME, defaulting to the model name given by the chip vendor but overridable.

The tapname reflects the role of that TAP, and should follow this convention:

Every TAP requires at least the following configparams:

A TAP may also provide optional configparams:

10.4 Other TAP commands

Command: jtag cget -event event_name
Command: jtag configure -event event_name handler

At this writing this TAP attribute mechanism is used only for event handling. (It is not a direct analogue of the cget/configure mechanism for debugger targets.) See the next section for information about the available events.

The configure subcommand assigns an event handler, a TCL string which is evaluated when the event is triggered. The cget subcommand returns that handler.

10.5 TAP Events

OpenOCD includes two event mechanisms. The one presented here applies to all JTAG TAPs. The other applies to debugger targets, which are associated with certain TAPs.

The TAP events currently defined are:

If you need some action after each JTAG reset which isn’t actually specific to any TAP (since you can’t yet trust the scan chain’s contents to be accurate), you might:

jtag configure CHIP.jrc -event post-reset {
  echo "JTAG Reset done"
  ... non-scan jtag operations to be done after reset

10.6 Enabling and Disabling TAPs

In some systems, a JTAG Route Controller (JRC) is used to enable and/or disable specific JTAG TAPs. Many ARM-based chips from Texas Instruments include an “ICEPick” module, which is a JRC. Such chips include DaVinci and OMAP3 processors.

A given TAP may not be visible until the JRC has been told to link it into the scan chain; and if the JRC has been told to unlink that TAP, it will no longer be visible. Such routers address problems that JTAG “bypass mode” ignores, such as:

The IEEE 1149.1 JTAG standard has no concept of a “disabled” tap, as implied by the existence of JTAG routers. However, the upcoming IEEE 1149.7 framework (layered on top of JTAG) does include a kind of JTAG router functionality.

In OpenOCD, tap enabling/disabling is invoked by the Tcl commands shown below, and is implemented using TAP event handlers. So for example, when defining a TAP for a CPU connected to a JTAG router, your target.cfg file should define TAP event handlers using code that looks something like this:

jtag configure CHIP.cpu -event tap-enable {
  ... jtag operations using CHIP.jrc
jtag configure CHIP.cpu -event tap-disable {
  ... jtag operations using CHIP.jrc

Then you might want that CPU’s TAP enabled almost all the time:

jtag configure $CHIP.jrc -event setup "jtag tapenable $CHIP.cpu"

Note how that particular setup event handler declaration uses quotes to evaluate $CHIP when the event is configured. Using brackets { } would cause it to be evaluated later, at runtime, when it might have a different value.

Command: jtag tapdisable

If necessary, disables the tap by sending it a tap-disable event. Returns the string "1" if the tap specified by is enabled, and "0" if it is disabled.

Command: jtag tapenable

If necessary, enables the tap by sending it a tap-enable event. Returns the string "1" if the tap specified by is enabled, and "0" if it is disabled.

Command: jtag tapisenabled


Note: Humans will find the scan_chain command more helpful for querying the state of the JTAG taps.

10.7 Autoprobing

TAP configuration is the first thing that needs to be done after interface and reset configuration. Sometimes it’s hard finding out what TAPs exist, or how they are identified. Vendor documentation is not always easy to find and use.

To help you get past such problems, OpenOCD has a limited autoprobing ability to look at the scan chain, doing a blind interrogation and then reporting the TAPs it finds. To use this mechanism, start the OpenOCD server with only data that configures your JTAG interface, and arranges to come up with a slow clock (many devices don’t support fast JTAG clocks right when they come out of reset).

For example, your openocd.cfg file might have:

source [find interface/olimex-arm-usb-tiny-h.cfg]
reset_config trst_and_srst
jtag_rclk 8

When you start the server without any TAPs configured, it will attempt to autoconfigure the TAPs. There are two parts to this:

  1. TAP discovery ... After a JTAG reset (sometimes a system reset may be needed too), each TAP’s data registers will hold the contents of either the IDCODE or BYPASS register. If JTAG communication is working, OpenOCD will see each TAP, and report what -expected-id to use with it.
  2. IR Length discovery ... Unfortunately JTAG does not provide a reliable way to find out the value of the -irlen parameter to use with a TAP that is discovered. If OpenOCD can discover the length of a TAP’s instruction register, it will report it. Otherwise you may need to consult vendor documentation, such as chip data sheets or BSDL files.

In many cases your board will have a simple scan chain with just a single device. Here’s what OpenOCD reported with one board that’s a bit more complex:

clock speed 8 kHz
There are no enabled taps. AUTO PROBING MIGHT NOT WORK!!
AUTO auto0.tap - use "jtag newtap auto0 tap -expected-id 0x2b900f0f ..."
AUTO auto1.tap - use "jtag newtap auto1 tap -expected-id 0x07926001 ..."
AUTO auto2.tap - use "jtag newtap auto2 tap -expected-id 0x0b73b02f ..."
AUTO auto0.tap - use "... -irlen 4"
AUTO auto1.tap - use "... -irlen 4"
AUTO auto2.tap - use "... -irlen 6"
no gdb ports allocated as no target has been specified

Given that information, you should be able to either find some existing config files to use, or create your own. If you create your own, you would configure from the bottom up: first a target.cfg file with these TAPs, any targets associated with them, and any on-chip resources; then a board.cfg with off-chip resources, clocking, and so forth.



See the ST document titled: STR91xFAxxx, Section 3.15 Jtag Interface, Page: 28/102, Figure 3: JTAG chaining inside the STR91xFA.
