Out-of-bounds recovery circuit
AssigneeImagination Technologies Limited
InventorsAshish Darbari, Iain Singleton
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Out-of-bounds recovery circuits configured to detect an out-of-bounds violation in an electronic device, and cause the electronic device to transition to a predetermined safe state when an out-of-bounds violation is detected. The out-of-bounds recovery circuits include detection logic configured to detect that an out-of-bounds violation has occurred when a processing element of the electronic device has fetched an instruction from an unallowable memory address range for the current operating state of the electronic device; and transition logic configured to cause the electronic device to transition to a predetermined safe state when an out-of-bounds violation has been detected by the detection logic.
Claims20
An out-of-bounds recovery circuit for an electronic device, the out-of-bounds recovery circuit comprising:
- detection logic configured to:
- monitor one or more control and/or data signals of the electronic device;
- and
- detect an out-of-bounds violation in the electronic device, when the detection logic determines, based on the one or more control and/or data signals of the electronic device, a processing element of the electronic device has fetched an instruction from a non-allowable memory address for a current operating state of the electronic device;
- and
- transition logic configured to, in response to the detection logic detecting an out-of-bounds violation, cause the electronic device to transition to a predetermined safe state by (i) raising an interrupt, (ii) disabling one or more valid signals of the electronic device, and (iii) setting a current state of the processing element to an idle state.
A method of recovering an electronic device from an out-of-bounds violation, the method comprising:
- monitoring, by an out-of-bounds recovery circuit, one or more control and/or data signals of the electronic device;
- detecting, by the out-of-bounds recovery circuit, an out-of-bounds violation in the electronic device when it is determined, from the one or more control and/or data signals of the electronic device, that a processing element of the electronic device has fetched an instruction from a non-allowable memory address for a current operating state of the electronic device;
- and
- in response to detecting an out-of-bounds violation, causing, by the out-of-bounds recovery circuit, the electronic device to transition to a predetermined safe state by (i) raising an interrupt, (ii) disabling one or more valid signals of the electronic device, and (iii) setting a current state of the processing element to an idle state.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.