Program counter range comparator with equality, greater than, less than and non-equal detection modes
AssigneeTexas Instruments Incorporated
InventorsJose L. Flores, Lewis Nardini, Maria B. H. Gill
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An program counter address comparator includes two comparators comparing an input program counter address with respective reference addresses. The comparators produce a match indication on selectable criteria, such as greater than, less than, equal to, not equal to, less than or equal to, and greater than or equal to, and can be selectively chained. Input multiplexers permit selection of either the program counter address bus or a secondary address bus. The reference addresses and control functions are enabled via central processing unit accessible memory mapped registers.
Claims6
A program counter address comparator comprising:
- a first programmable reference address register storing a first reference address;
- a first comparator receiving said first reference address from said first programmable reference address register and a program counter address input for generating a greater than output, a less than output and an equal to output depending upon the relationship between said first reference address and the program counter address;
- a second programmable reference address register storing a second reference address;
- a second comparator receiving said second reference address from said second programmable reference address register and the program counter address for generating a greater than, less than or equal to output depending upon the relationship between said second reference address and the program counter address;
- first and second program counter compare control units connected to respective first and second comparators, each of said first and second program counter compare control units generating a corresponding first and second local event signal selectively dependent upon said greater than output, said less than output and said equal to output of said corresponding comparator and a corresponding first and second program counter compare event signal selectively dependent upon said local signal of the other program counter compare control unit.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.