Electrical computers and digital processing systems: processing – Dynamic instruction dependency checking – monitoring or...
Reexamination Certificate
1999-01-22
2001-12-04
Powell, Mark R. (Department: 2122)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: processing
Dynamic instruction dependency checking, monitoring or...
Reexamination Certificate
active
06327649
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to applications where software code is being developed for a read only memory (ROM) device inside a system which will need to run the ROM code and code from an external memory simultaneously. An important example of this type of application is a digital signal processing device software development application.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Often, when developing ROM code for an application, a developer will want to test the code before implementing it on a chip inside of ROM, because that implementation can be expensive and time consuming. In the prior art, a solution has been to use the external bus interface to external memory for this purpose. The code to be tested is placed in the external memory. Once it is there, it can be accessed by the external bus interface, and therefore by the elements of the system that can access the external bus interface. The code, then, does not need to be resident in the ROM to be tested; placing the code in external memory provides all the access to the code that is needed for testing.
A problem occurs, however, when attempting the testing of applications which, when operational, will require access to the external memory. Trying to test them according to the methods disclosed in the prior art will clearly not work - the external memory must be left alone to be used by the application and at the same time would be needed for storing the code to be tested. The instant invention works to solve this problem without forcing the software developer to create a ROM chip for each version of the code that must be tested which is costly and time-consuming.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention comprises, in one aspect, an apparatus for testing data to be stored in non-volatile memory. This apparatus is used in a data processing device comprising a processor, a non-volatile memory operably coupled to said processor, and an external bus interface operably coupled to said processor and said non-volatile memory, and where said data processing device is operably coupled to a first external memory. The apparatus for testing data to be stored within a non-volatile memory comprises a second external memory coupled to said external bus interface, and an interface block operably coupled to said non-volatile memory, to said processor, and to said second external memory, said interface block comprising means for causing data from second external memory to be provided to said processor upon the receipt by said interface block of memory requests from said processor.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5513374 (1996-04-01), Baji
patent: 5740404 (1998-04-01), Baji
patent: 6094726 (2000-07-01), Gonion et al.
patent: 6134605 (2000-10-01), Hudson et al.
Holmes Michael B.
Lucent Technologies - Inc.
Powell Mark R.
Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP
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