Nxp Usa, Inc.

Freescale Semiconductor,inc.

Michael Rohleder

Manfred P Thanner

Stefan Singer

George Adrian Ciusleanu

David Allen Brown

Stefan Doll

Stephan G Mueller

Thomas Koch

Marcus Mueller

Gary Hay

Thomas Henry Luedeke

Michael Andreas Staudenmaier

Vladimir Litovtchenko

Lukas Vaculik

Rolf Dieter Schlagenhaft

Clemens Alfred Roettgermann

Jochen Gerster

Ilhan Hatirnaz

Cristian Macario

Vaclav Halbich

Petr Spacek

Vincent Aubineau

Dirk Wendel

Markus Baumeister

Timothy J Strauss

Joachim Fader

Markus Regner

Dirk Moeller

Jeffrey Freeman

Davor Bogavac

Frank Steinert

Peter M Ippolito

Petr Cholasta

Harald Luepken

Peter Limmer

Bridget Catherine Hooser

Stephen Pickering

Anita Eveline Maliverney

Glen Nicholas Mithran Evans

Carmen Klug-Mocanu

Yiling Zhang

Tobias Thiel

Mircea Ionita

Ernst Aderholz

Bernhard Braun

Frank Donner

Frank Lenke

John Doyle

John Logan

Manfred Thanner

Marcel Achim

Josef Fuchs

A peak current detector is integrated into a power supply, such as a power management integrated circuit, to detect glitch attacks imposed on the power rails inside the power supply. Integrated circuitry being supplied by the power supply periodically checks the state of the power supply via a secure communication channel to obtain the detected peak current values, which allow the integrated circuitry to detect those attacks and react accordingly to any possible threats.

Power supply peak current measurement

A system and method is disclosed, to generate an AC signal having a positive and negative half-cycles, each comprising a plurality of PWM pulses each with an individually designated pulse width, the system comprising: a first clock circuit; a second, faster, clock circuit; clock ratio measurement circuitry configured to output a first measurement being a ratio of frequencies; a propagation delay circuit configured to measure a number of propagation elements through which a bit transition propagates within a second clock signal period; pulse data calculation element configured to determine pulse shaping data; and for each of the half-cycles, a respective pulse synthesis circuit configured to synthesise the respective plurality of PWM pulses, each pulse having a respective start defined by the first clock signal, and a pulse width defined by the pulse shaping data and synthesised from the second clock and an output pulse from the propagation delay circuit.

Systems and methods for pulse width modulation shaping

Duty cycles of pulse width modulation ('PWM') pulses are determined by measurements taken with respect to an internally generated clock signal. One of these measurements calculates, in a continuous dynamic manner, a ratio of the number of cycles of the internally generated clock signal to one or more cycles of a PWM clock signal utilized as a time base for generation of the PWM pulses. This clock ratio measurement designates how many cycles of the internally generated clock signal will be used to designate a first portion of a duty cycle for each PWM pulse. Another measurement is utilized to determine a fractional portion of a cycle of the internally generated clock signal that will be used to designate a second portion of the duty cycle for each PWM pulse.

High frequency pulse width modulation shaping

An embedded information system includes a load control circuit coupleable to an external memory that contains instructions and constant data (organized by variable sized load units, LUs, and where at least one property of a LU is specified within metadata) associated with application code of a software application, at least one processor configured to execute the at least one application code; an internal memory configured as main system memory in a first part and as a cache for storing the instructions and constant data for an execution of the at least one application code from the external memory in a second part. The load control circuit is configured to load the LUs associated with the at least one application code from the external memory with a granularity of a single LU into the internal memory. A cache control circuit, manages the second part, based on metadata corresponding to the LUs, by being configured to: observe the execution of the application code by detecting at least one of: an LU being executed, a change from one LU to another LU within the internal memory; load metadata information corresponding to a LU instance from the external memory or the internal memory, specify a next LU to be loaded by the load control circuit into the second part; and specify a next LU to be evicted from the second part when there is insufficient space for loading the next LU.

Embedded information system and method for memory management

A method of managing load units of executable instructions between internal memory in a microcontroller with multiple bus masters, and a non-volatile memory device external to the microcontroller. A copy of the load units are loaded from the external memory device into the internal memory for use by corresponding bus masters. Each load unit is with a corresponding load entity queue and each load entity queue is associated with a corresponding one of the multiple bus masters. Each load entity queue selects an eviction candidate from the associated copy of the load units currently loaded in the internal memory. Information identifying the eviction candidate for each load entity queue is broadcasted to all load entity queues. The eviction candidate is added to a set of managed eviction candidates if none of the load entity queues vetoes using the eviction candidate.

Systems and methods for managing cache replacement

A processor scheduling structure, a method and an integrated circuit are provided. In accordance with at least one embodiment, the processor scheduling structure comprises a processor circuit and an operating system task aware caching (OTC) controller circuit coupled to the processor circuit. The OTC controller circuit comprises a load request timer, a load sequence queue (LSQ), and a request arbiter. The timer and the LSQ are coupled to and provide inputs to the request arbiter. The processor circuit comprises an internal memory and a processor core. The OTC controller circuit is configured to schedule processor tasks for the processor circuit in accordance with both priority-based scheduling, using the LSQ, and time-triggered scheduling, using the load request timer.

Hardware for supporting OS driven observation and anticipation based on more granular, variable sized observation units

An integrated circuit is disclosed that includes a central processing unit (CPU), a random access memory (RAM) configured for storing data and CPU executable instructions, a first peripheral circuit for accessing memory that is external to the integrated circuit, a second peripheral circuit, and a communication bus coupled to the CPU, the RAM, the first peripheral circuit and the second peripheral circuit. The second peripheral circuit includes a first preload register configured to receive and store a first preload value, a first register configured to store first information that directly or indirectly identifies a first location where first instructions of a first task can be found in memory that is external to the integrated circuit, and a counter circuit that includes a counter value. The counter circuit can increment or decrement the counter value with time when the counter circuit is started. A first compare circuit is also included and can compare the counter value to the first preload value. The first compare circuit is configured to assert a first match signal in response to detecting a match between the counter value and the first preload value. The second peripheral circuit is configured to send a first preload request to the first peripheral circuit in response to an assertion of the first match signal. The first preload request identifies the location where the first instructions of the first task can be found in the external memory.

Hardware for supporting time triggered load anticipation in the context of a real time OS

A method for capacitive touch sensing with high safety integrity includes measuring at least one of a first mutual-capacitance of an electrode pair comprising two of a first electrode, a second electrode and a third electrode, and a self-capacitance between the third electrode and a body biased to a fixed voltage. A contact of the body to a dielectric overlaying each of the first electrode, the second electrode and the third electrode is detected by comparing at least one of the first mutual-capacitance of the electrode pair to a first reference range, and the self-capacitance to a second reference range.

Capacitive touch sensing with high safety integrity

Systems and methods of managing variable size load units of application codes in a processing system include identifying pages of a random access memory (RAM) device to store copies of load units from an external memory device upon request by a bus master in the processing system. The RAM device is internal to an integrated circuit device that includes the bus masters, and the external memory device is external to the integrated circuit device. The bus masters execute the application codes, and each of the application codes comprise one or more load units that include executable program instructions. At least some of the load units have different sizes from one another. A page type indicator is determined for an identified page. A first page type indicates whether the identified page is a split page to store a segment of each of two different load units.

Systems and methods for managing variable size load units

A system, method, apparatus and integrated circuit are provided for collecting runtime performance data with a set of hardware timers under control of a dedicated hardware control register by connecting a central processing unit (CPU) and memory to a timer block bank having a plurality of timer instances which are selectively enabled and activated to collect runtime performance data during execution of application code by measuring specified software execution events, where the dedicated hardware control register includes a plurality of register fields for independently controlling activation behavior of the plurality of timer instances in response to a single write operation to all register fields in the hardware control register.

Hardware support for OS-centric performance monitoring with data collection

A power control system, method, and architecture are disclosed for a multi-bank memory which provides independent, concurrent memory access to at least one memory block in each memory bank by using observation circuits to monitor bus masters connected over bus master interface signals to an interconnect for memory access requests to the multi-bank memory and to provide notifications to a power control circuitry that a valid memory access request was issued by a bus master over the bus master interface, where the power control circuitry processes the notifications received from each observation circuit and generates therefrom power control signals that are provided directly to each memory block and to bypass the interconnect, thereby separately controlling a power state for each memory block with power-up control signals that arrive at each memory block at or before a memory access request sent over the interconnect.

High performance method for reduction of memory power consumption employing RAM retention mode control with low latency and maximum granularity

Hardware for supporting OS driven load anticipation based on variable sized load units

An integrated circuit includes a security module with multiple stages arranged in a pipeline, with each stage executing a different operation for accessing stored lifecycle (LC) information. For each portion of LC being accessed, each stage performs N iterations of its corresponding operation, whereby N is an integer greater than two, and crosschecks the results of successive iterations to ensure that the results of the operation are consistent. In addition, the stages of the security module are overlapping, such that different stages can perform different iterations concurrently. These concurrent operations at different stages are organized such that they may also be crosschecked and thereby confirm 'offset' results between the stages.

Integrated circuit lifecycle security with redundant and overlapping crosschecks

A task control circuit maintains, in response to task event information, a task information queue that includes task information for a plurality of tasks. Based upon the task information in the task information queue, a future task switch condition is identified as corresponding to a task switch time for a particular task of the plurality of tasks. A load start time is determined for a set of instructions for the particular task. A pre-fetch request is generated to load the set of instructions for the particular task into the memory circuit. The pre-fetch request is forwarded to a hardware loader circuit. In response to the task switch time, a task event trigger is generated for the particular task. The hardware loader circuit is used to load, in response to the pre-fetch request, the set of instructions from a non-volatile memory into the memory circuit.

Hardware controlled instruction pre-fetching

Pre-fetching instructions for tasks of an operating system (OS) is provided by calling a task scheduler that determines a load start time for a set of instructions for a particular task corresponding to a task switch condition. The OS calls, and in response to the load start time, a loader entity module that generates a pre-fetch request that loads the set of instructions for the particular task from a non-volatile memory circuit into a random access memory circuit. The OS calls the task scheduler to switch to the particular task.

Instruction pre-fetching

Growing community of inventors

Unterschleissheim, Germany

Michael Rohleder