Apparatus and methods for calibrating analog circuitry in an integrated circuit
AssigneeAltera Corporation
InventorsNeville Carvalho, Tim Tri Hoang, Sergey Shumarayev
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The present disclosure provides apparatus and methods for the calibration of analog circuitry on an integrated circuit. One embodiment relates to a method of calibrating analog circuitry within an integrated circuit. A microcontroller that is embedded in the integrated circuit is booted up. A reset control signal is sent to reset an analog circuit in the integrated circuit, and a response signal for the analog circuit is monitored by the microcontroller. Based on the response signal, a calibration parameter for the analog circuit is determined, and the analog circuit is 10 configured using the calibration parameter. Other embodiments, aspects and features are also disclosed.
Claims20
An integrated circuit comprising:
- a core of the integrated circuit;
- a microcontroller that is embedded in the integrated circuit, the microcontroller including a processing unit and memory;
- a controller block arranged to receive boot code for the microcontroller from a programmer object file and store the boot code in the memory for the microcontroller;
- a plurality of sub-modules which include analog circuitry;
- and
- a common bus arranged to communicatively interconnect the microcontroller with the plurality of sub-modules for calibration of the analog circuitry.
A system for calibrating analog circuits within an integrated circuit, the system comprising:
- a microcontroller that is embedded in the integrated circuit, the microcontroller including a processing unit and memory;
- a plurality of sub-modules that includes the analog circuits therein;
- and
- a tangible non-transitory storage medium for storing boot code for the microcontroller, wherein the boot code is loaded to the memory of the microcontroller from a programmer object file in the tangible non-transitory storage medium, and wherein the microcontroller configures the analog circuits in response to executing the boot code in the memory of the microcontroller.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.