It appears that Microchip has released a new "in-circuit emulator" that they call the MPLAB ICE 4. https://www.microchip.com/en-us/development-tool/DV244140#. Does anyone here have experience using it? Any comment on benefits over ICD 4 or the normal Atmel debugging tools?
I put "in-circuit emulator" in quotes because it doesn't seem to replace the MCU in the circuit like actual in-circuit emulators that I've used. Those things rock because you can see absolutely everything that's going on inside the emulated MCU. This looks more like a debugger with enhanced trace capabilities on the MCUs that support it.
The days of old-style ICEs are long gone, due to increasing clock speeds. MCUs now include on-chip debug hardware, used in conjunction with code running on the MCU. This does sometimes impose constraints on the debugging process though.
Over the years I find myself using debug hardware less & less - I started off with the old Picmaster, then ICE2000, both of which used bond-out type chips - I had maybe a dozen headers for each system. Then the ICD debuggers, but nowadays it's pretty much just program and spit debug info as needed on IO pins and serial port.
It's probably a mix of the type of (simpler) work I do, better familiarity with the parts, and better generic debug tools like scope serial debug & bus display.
I did look at the ICE4 a while ago, but couldn't really see that I'd get much value out of it, and it wasn't very clear exactly what advantage it gave over ICD4