Loading code with an Abatron BDI2000

[Shaun Jackman <sjackman@gmail.com>]

Hello,

I'm using gdb 6.2.1 to debug an ARM7TDMI with an Abatron BDI2000, a
device which speaks the gdb remote protocol natively over Ethernet.
Loading code with
gdb is a slower process than I had hoped.

(gdb) lo
Loading section .text, size 0x37088 lma 0x2000000
Loading section .rodata, size 0x90a4 lma 0x2037088
Loading section .data, size 0x1a84 lma 0x204022c
Start address 0x2000000, load size 269232
Transfer rate: 153846 bits/sec, 312 bytes/write.

I'm seeing a transfer rate of ~19 kB/s. The BDI is connected to my
development machine through a cross-over Ethernet cable, so there is
no other traffic on the network segment. Abatron's website suggests the
BDI2000 should be capable of transferring code to an ARM7TDMI at 340
kB/s. These two figures seem to be separated by an order of magnitude.

A quick network sniff with Ethereal shows it's taking seven packets
and about 15 ms to transfer each 312 byte chunk of code. Can anything
be done to improve this performance? To start, can the write size be
increased to a value near Ethernet's maximum segment size?

Thanks,
Shaun

ARM7TDMI
BDI2000
gdb 6.2.1
Linux 2.6.11