The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.

The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.

Date of Patent:
Aug. 18, 2020

Filed:

Sep. 11, 2018
Applicant:

Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA (US);

Inventors:

Pierre-Olivier J. Martel, Mountain View, CA (US);

Jeffrey R. Wilcox, San Jose, CA (US);

Ian P. Shaeffer, Los Gatos, CA (US);

Andrew D. Myrick, Los Altos, CA (US);

Robert W. Hill, Los Gatos, CA (US);

Tristan F. Schaap, San Francisco, CA (US);

Assignee:

Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA (US);

Attorney:
Primary Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
G06F 21/32 (2013.01); G06F 21/76 (2013.01); G06F 21/81 (2013.01);
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
G06F 21/76 (2013.01); G06F 21/32 (2013.01); G06F 21/81 (2013.01); G06F 2221/2111 (2013.01);
Abstract

Techniques are disclosed in which a secure circuit controls a gating circuit to enable or disable other circuitry of a device (e.g., one or more input sensors). For example, the gating circuit may be a power gating circuit and the secure circuit may be configured to disable power to an input sensor in certain situations. As another example, the gating circuit may be a clock gating circuit and the secure circuit may be configured to disable the clock to an input sensor. As yet another example, the gating circuit may be configured to gate a control bus and the secure circuit may be configured to disable control signals to an input sensor. In some embodiments, hardware resources included in or controlled by the secure circuit are not accessible by other elements of the device, other than by sending requests to a predetermined set of memory locations (e.g., a secure mailbox).


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