## Target Communication Framework (TCF)

TCF (Target Communication Framework) is a vendor-neutral, lightweight, extensible network protocol used mainly for communicating with embedded systems (targets). Its most distinguishing feature is that TCF is designed to transparently plug in value-adding servers between the tool and the target. TCF is protocol agnostic in that it does not depend on a specific transport like TCP/IP, serial, SSH tunnel, or other. It also supports auto-discovery of targets and services, so any tool can determine which services are available from the target.

Carbide.c++ uses TCF to communicate with TRK, Trace, and other services on a target device. For example, the Carbide debugger uses TCF to communicate with the TRK remote agent to control debuggable programs running on the target. Other Carbide plug-ins can also use TCF to communicate with their specific services.

##### Related tasks

- Concepts
- TCF (Eclipse)