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.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 04, 1999
Filed:
Apr. 07, 1997
Joseph M Harris, II, Cedar Park, TX (US);
John P Dunn, Austin, TX (US);
Theo C Freund, Austin, TX (US);
James C Nash, Austin, TX (US);
Motorola, Inc., Schaumburg, IL (US);
Abstract
An integrated circuit (10) contains a central processing unit (CPU) (12) and a plurality of memory blocks (26-34) configured into one or more banks of memory. A plurality of power control switches (38-42) are used to dynamically select which of a plurality of external voltage supply signals are provided to power each of the memory blocks (26-34). The power control switches (38-42) may be configured from software via writing the data to a register (24) or can be enabled by test control circuitry (22) or can be automatically enabled in response to VDD power voltage failure. In addition, an intelligent controller can dynamically control the switches in response to execution flow of data accesses and instruction fetches from the memory banks so that only currently accessed memory banks or recently accessed memory banks are activated at a high power level while all other memory banks are in a low power stand-by mode.