Altera Corporation

W Bradley Vest

Krishna Rangasayee

Myron Wai Wong

John C Costello

Robert R N Bielby

Mark W Fiester

A circuit for programmably grounding (or coupling to the positive rail) unused outputs to improve noise immunity of the circuit. The circuit of the present invention achieves, for example, programmable grounding of an output via already existing test signal paths, without introducing delays in speed critical output signal paths.

Programmable control circuit for grounding unused outputs

An integrated circuit contains circuitry to operate in such a fashion to reduce output noise when switching output circuits from a programming mode to a user mode. In an implementation, the integrated circuit (,) is configurable in the programming mode with user configuration data. In the user mode, the integrated circuit will operate with the functionality as defined by the user during the programming mode. When switching from the programming mode to the user mode, each output (,) of the integrated circuit will switch to its user mode value. In order to minimize switching noise, the outputs are released to their user mode values not all at the same time.

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Santa Clara, CA, United States of America

W Bradley Vest