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A bond-out processor is an emulation processor that takes the place of the microcontroller or microprocessor in the target board while an application is being developed.
Bond-out processors have internal signals and bus brought out to external pins. The term bond-out derives from connecting the emulation circuitry to these external pins. These devices are designed to be used within an in-circuit emulator and are not typically used in any other kind of system.
Bond-out pins were marked as no-connects in the first devices produced by Intel, and were usually not connected to anything on the ordinary production silicon. Later bond-out versions of the microprocessor were produced in a bigger package to provide more signals and functionality.
Bond-out processors provides capabilities far beyond those of a simple ROM monitor. A ROM monitor is a firmware program that runs instead of the application code and provides a connection to a host computer to carry out debugging functions. In general the ROM monitor uses part of the processor resources and shares the memory with the user code.