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AssigneeAltera Corporation
InventorsShiva Rao, David Alexander Munday
Estimating the term…
Integrated circuits may include registers that store register states. Only a subset of the registers may store critical register states. The subset of registers may be specially demarcated, such as using synthesis directions in the hardware description, and may be coupled to dedicated extraction/loading circuitry. The extraction/loading circuitry may be implemented using soft or hard logic or can leverage existing programming or debugging circuitry on a programmable integrated circuit. The extraction/loading mechanism may also be implemented using multiplexers and associated control circuitry, scan chain circuitry, a memory-mapped interface, a tool-instantiated or user-instantiated finite state machine, or external memory interface logic. Accessing critical register states in this way can help improve efficiency with live migration events, debugging, retiming, and other integrated circuit operations.
A method of operating an integrated circuit that includes a plurality of registers, wherein a subset of the plurality of registers comprises critical registers storing critical register states, the method comprising:
A method of using integrated circuit design tools implemented on computing equipment to design an integrated circuit, the method comprising:
A method, comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.