International Business Machines Corporation

Lsi Logic Corporation

Lsi Corporation

Robert Neal Carlton Broberg, Iii

Jonathan W Byrn

Gary Paul McClannahan

Gary Scott Delp

Paul Gary Reuland

Chad Balling McBride

George Wayne Nation

Michael K Eneboe

Matthew Scott Wingren

Thomas Sandoval

Paul B Kubista

Daniel James Murray

Troy Evan Faber

Gerald David Miller

A set of tools is provided herein that produces useful, proven, and correct integrated semiconductor chips. Having as input either a customer's requirements for a chip, or a design specification for a partially manufactured semiconductor chip, the tools generate the RTL for control plane interconnect; memory composition, test, and manufacture; embedded logic analysis, trace interconnection, and utilization of spare resources on the chip; I/O qualification, JTAG, boundary scan, and SSO analysis; testable clock generation, control, and distribution; interconnection of all of the shared logic in a testable manner from a transistor fabric and/or configurable blocks in the slice. The input customer requirements are first conditioned by RTL analysis tools to quickly implement its logic. The slice definition and the RTL shell provides the correct logic for a set of logic interfaces for the design specification to connect. The tools share a common database so that logical interactions do not require multiple entries. The designs are qualified, tested, and verified by other tools. The tools further optimize the placement and timing of the blocks on the chip with respect to each other and with respect to placement on a board. The suite may be run as batch processes or can be driven interactively through a common graphical user interface. The tools also have an iterative mode and a global mode. In the iterative mode, one or more of the selected tools can generate the blocks or modify a design incrementally and then look at the consequences of the addition, or change. In the global mode, the semiconductor product is designed all at once in a batch process as above and then optimized altogether. This suite of generation tools generates design views including a qualified netlist for a foundry to manufacture.

Suite of tools to design integrated circuits

Simplified process to design integrated circuits

An apparatus including a first circuit, a second circuit, and a third circuit. The first circuit may be configured to receive a plurality of input signals and present one of the plurality of input signals as a data signal in response to a control signal. The second circuit may be configured to generate the control signal and generate a trace data stream in response to the data signal. The third circuit may be configured to receive and store the trace data stream and read and present the stored trace data stream in response to one or more commands.

Circuit and/or method for automated use of unallocated resources for a trace buffer application

A register address generation tool is used during the design of semiconductor products. For those registers and/or memories that are addressable on a bus, the register address generation tool creates the interconnect RTL, header files, static timing analysis constraint files, and verification testcases. The tool also maintains coherence between what has been generated and the available resources for the design of the semiconductor product in a design. If there are any registers and/or memories that are not being used, the register address generation tool may further generate the RTL that will convert these unused resources to performance-enhancing features such as control registers, status registers, etc. The register address generation tool read a design database having an application set to determine what hardmacs and what transistor fabric is available. It also receives as input a bus specification and address parameters. The register address generation tool may be used with a suite of generation tools to achieve the rapid design and realization of a new semiconductor product.

Designing and testing the interconnection of addressable devices of integrated circuits

A method and apparatus are provided for implementing direct memory access (DMA) with dataflow blocking for users for processing data communications in a communications system. A DMA starting address register receives an initial DMA starting address and a DMA length register receives an initial DMA length. A DMA state machine receives a control input for starting the DMA. The DMA state machine updates the DMA starting address to provide a current DMA starting address. The DMA state machine loads a DMA ending address. A DMA blocking logic receives the current DMA starting address and the DMA ending address and blocks received memory requests only within a current active DMA region.

Method and apparatus for direct memory access (DMA) with dataflow blocking for users

Within a communication node, low level hardware is programmed and provided with filter data to accept broadcast frames. A high level layer of hardware, utilizing the pre-loaded, pre-defined comparison data, checks incoming frame header information. Based on pre-defined filter data or reference values loaded into low level registers, the high-level hardware will reject or accept submitted data communication frames. This method reduces the requirement for software to operate on each incoming frame header, thus reducing load on the processor.

Method and apparatus for filtering ethernet frames

A method and apparatus are provided for target addressing and translation in a non-uniform memory environment with user defined target tags. The apparatus for target addressing and translation includes a processor and a first address translation unit coupled to the processor. The first address translation unit translates an effective address (EA) to a real address (RA). The first address translation unit includes a target tag associated with each address translation. A second address translation unit translates a real address (RA) to a target address (TA). The second address translation unit includes a target tag associated with each address translation. A cache includes a cache directory and a target tag is stored into the cache directory with each cache fill.

Method and apparatus for target addressing and translation in a non-uniform memory environment with user defined target tags

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Rochester, MN, United States of America

Robert Neal Carlton Broberg, Iii