Nxp Usa, Inc.

Parul Bansal

Praveen Durga

Arun Kumar Barman

Jhalak Gupta

Ritu Prasad

A self-test mechanism within an integrated circuit to automatically interleave evaluation of a clock signal by a clock monitor unit with periodic testing for faulty operation of a clock monitor unit implemented within the integrated circuit for monitoring a clock signal. The mechanism injects faults into the clock monitor unit to evaluate if the clock monitor unit is operating in accordance with its specified operating parameters. The injected faults are intended to cause the clock monitor unit to determine that the clock signal is operating outside of a specified frequency range. If the injected faults do not cause the clock monitor unit to determine that the clock signal is operating both above and below the specified frequency range, then the clock monitor unit is not functioning according to specified operating parameters.

Automatic fault injection in a clock monitor unit

A self-test mechanism within an integrated circuit to test for faulty operation of a clock monitor unit implemented within the integrated circuit for monitoring a clock signal. The mechanism intentionally injects faults into the clock monitor unit to evaluate if the clock monitor unit is operating in accordance with its specified operating parameters. The injected faults are intended to cause the clock monitor unit to determine that the clock signal is operating outside of an artificially generated, imaginary specified frequency range. If the injected faults do not cause the clock monitor unit to determine that the clock signal is operating both above and below the artificially generated, imaginary specified frequency range, then the clock monitor unit is not functioning according to specified operating parameters.

Fault injection in a clock monitor unit

A protection module for an electronic circuit prevents unintended write operations by a master module to functional registers of a protected module. The protection module includes soft lock bits (SLBs) that indicate whether corresponding functional registers are locked and control logic that supports (i) a page select (PS) control parameter that indicates whether access by the master module is to the functional registers or the SLBs and (ii) a mode select (MS) control parameter that indicates whether access by the master module to the functional registers is in a normal access mode, in which each written-to functional register is left unlocked, or an auto-lock access mode, in which each just-written-to functional register is automatically locked by setting the corresponding SLB. The functional registers and the SLBs share addresses that can fit within a single address space that includes the control parameters.

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Delhi, India

Parul Bansal