Controllable Storage Elements for an IC

An integrated circuit (“IC”) comprising:

• a plurality of configurable logic circuits for configurably performing computations;
• and
• a plurality of configurable interconnect circuits for configurably passing signals to and from said configurable logic circuits,
• wherein each of the plurality of configurable interconnect circuits comprises (i) a selection circuit for selecting a signal from a plurality of inputs and (ii) an output stage that comprises a plurality of controllable storage sections, each storage section for receiving the selected signal from the selection circuit without an intervening programmable circuit and for configurably storing the selected signal.

A method of configuring an integrated circuit (“IC”) comprising a plurality of reconfigurable circuits, the method comprising:

• receiving a user design that specifies a plurality of user operations;
• assigning each of the plurality of user operations to at least one reconfigurable circuit for at least one reconfiguration cycle, wherein each reconfigurable circuit is reconfigured to perform different operations by different configuration data sets at different reconfiguration cycles;
• for a particular reconfigurable circuit that provides an output to a destination circuit through a particular reconfigurable storage circuit, identifying a reconfiguration cycle during which the output of the particular reconfigurable circuit is not used by the destination circuit;
• and
• for the identified reconfiguration cycle, defining a particular configuration data set for configuring the particular reconfigurable storage circuit to close and hold a value that transparently passed through the particular reconfigurable storage circuit to the destination circuit in a prior reconfiguration cycle.

An electronic device comprising:

• a memory for storing sets of configuration data;
• and
• an integrated circuit (“IC”) comprising:
• a plurality of configurable logic circuits for configurably performing computations;
• and
• a plurality of configurable interconnect circuits for configurably passing signals to and from said plurality of configurable logic circuits,
• wherein each configurable interconnect circuit comprises (i) a selection circuit for selecting from a plurality of inputs to the configurable interconnect circuit as an output and (ii) a plurality of configurable storage elements for configurably storing signals from the output of the selection circuit, each of the plurality of configurable storage elements having a direct connection from the output of the selection circuit without any intervening configurable circuit.