Patents Assigned to Altera Corporation
  • Patent number: 10146898
    Abstract: A method for generating a design for a system implemented on a target device includes presenting a user with an interface that allows the user to weight objectives for an interconnect architecture of the design. The interconnect architecture is generated in response to weighted objectives provided by the user.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 31, 2016
    Date of Patent: December 4, 2018
    Assignee: Altera Corporation
    Inventors: Silvio Brugada, Aaron Ferrucci
  • Patent number: 10146249
    Abstract: A control system controls First-In First-Out (FIFO) settings of a receiving system. The control system includes a FIFO settings controller that receives a first signal indicative of a first frequency of data received by the receiving system. The FIFO settings controller receives a second signal indicative of a second frequency of a clock that reads the data received by the receiving system. The FIFO settings controller determines a difference (e.g., a parts-per-million (PPM) difference) between the first frequency and the second frequency. The FIFO settings controller sends a third signal indicative of instructions to adjust FIFO configuration settings based on the PPM difference.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 23, 2016
    Date of Patent: December 4, 2018
    Assignee: Altera Corporation
    Inventors: Han Hua Leong, Ru Yin Ng, Geok Sun Chong, David W. Mendel
  • Publication number: 20180341461
    Abstract: A specialized processing block on an integrated circuit includes a first and second arithmetic operator stage, an output coupled to another specialized processing block, and configurable interconnect circuitry which may be configured to route signals throughout the specialized processing block, including in and out of the first and second arithmetic operator stages. The configurable interconnect circuitry may further include multiplexer circuitry to route selected signals. The output of the specialized processing block that is coupled to another specialized processing block together with the configurable interconnect circuitry reduces the need to use resources outside the specialized processing block when implementing mathematical functions that require the use of more than one specialized processing block. An example for such mathematical functions include the implementation of scaled product sum operations and the implementation of Horner's rule.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 31, 2018
    Publication date: November 29, 2018
    Applicant: Altera Corporation
    Inventor: Martin Langhammer
  • Patent number: 10140411
    Abstract: A method for designing a system to be implemented on a target device, the method including generating bounding boxes on the target device for nets in the system where a bounding box identifies routing resources available for routing a corresponding net in the bounding box. The nets in the system are assigned to a plurality of threads to be routed. The threads are executed so that a plurality of the nets are routed in parallel within their corresponding bounding box.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 21, 2016
    Date of Patent: November 27, 2018
    Assignee: Altera Corporation
    Inventors: Vaughn Betz, Jordan Swartz, Vadim Gouterman
  • Patent number: 10142102
    Abstract: An integrated circuit having a Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) circuit is provided. The PUF circuit may reside as part of a secure subsystem, which also includes a random number generator, a syndrome generator, non-volatile memory, and control circuitry. A predetermined syndrome of a desired PUF response is stored in the non-volatile memory. During normal operation, a current PUF response may be read out from the PUF circuit. The current PUF response may include erroneous bits that differ from the desired PUF response. The random number generator may generator a random number that masks the current PUF response, whereas the syndrome generator outputs a syndrome of the current PUF response. This information may then be passed to a separate error-correcting code (ECC) processor. The ECC processor may return information back to the secure subsystem, and the control circuitry may then obtain a corrected PUF response that matches the desired PUF response.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 26, 2017
    Date of Patent: November 27, 2018
    Assignee: Altera Corporation
    Inventor: Bruce Pedersen
  • Patent number: 10140091
    Abstract: Integrated circuits with specialized processing blocks are provided. A specialized processing block may include one real addition stage and one real multiplier stage. The multiplier stage may simultaneously feed its output to the addition stage and directly to an adjacent specialized processing block. The addition stage may also produce sum and difference outputs in parallel. A group of four such specialized processing blocks may be connected in a chain to implement a radix-2 fast Fourier transform (FFT) butterfly. Multiple radix-2 butterflies may be stacked to form yet higher order radix butterflies. If desired, the specialized processing block may also be used to implement a complex multiply operation. Three or four specialized processing blocks may be chained together and along with one or more adders outside the specialized processing blocks, real and imaginary portions of a complex product can be generated.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 27, 2016
    Date of Patent: November 27, 2018
    Assignee: Altera Corporation
    Inventor: Martin Langhammer
  • Patent number: 10141936
    Abstract: An integrated circuit may have pipelined interconnects that are configurable to operate in registered single data rate mode, registered double data rate mode, or in combinational mode. The pipelined interconnect may include routing multiplexers for selecting incoming signals, circuitry for serialization and de-serialization, and memory elements that are configurable to store one or two signals per clock period. Operating the pipeline interconnects in double data rate mode may provide a trade-off between reducing the number of physical wires that are required to implement a design at a constant bandwidth or increasing the bandwidth while keeping the number of physical wires constant.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 22, 2017
    Date of Patent: November 27, 2018
    Assignee: Altera Corporation
    Inventors: David Lewis, Herman Henry Schmit, Carl Ebeling
  • Publication number: 20180337681
    Abstract: A semiconductor die includes at least one flexible interface block. The flexible interface block includes at least one interconnect, and at least one buffer coupled to the at least one interconnect. The flexible interface block further includes a routing interface coupled to circuitry integrated in the semiconductor die, and a controller coupled to provide communication between the routing interface and the at least one buffer.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 31, 2018
    Publication date: November 22, 2018
    Applicant: Altera Corporation
    Inventor: Tony K. Ngai
  • Patent number: 10136384
    Abstract: Integrated circuits with wireless communications circuitry are provided. The wireless communications circuitry may include an input FIFO, an output FIFO, a processing module interposed between the input and output FIFOs, and dynamic power control circuitry that controls the performance of the processing module. The input and output FIFOs may provide fill level information to the processing module. The dynamic power control circuitry may analyze the current fill level information received from the input and output FIFOs and may increase the operating frequency and/or boost the power supply voltage of the processing module in response to detecting that the input FIFO is filling up faster than the output FIFO or may decrease the operating frequency and/or reduce the power supply voltage of the processing module in response to detecting that the output FIFO is filling up faster than the input FIFO.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 14, 2014
    Date of Patent: November 20, 2018
    Assignee: Altera Corporation
    Inventor: Volker Mauer
  • Patent number: 10133594
    Abstract: Techniques and mechanisms provide a flexible mapping for physical functions and virtual functions in an environment including virtual machines.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 6, 2017
    Date of Patent: November 20, 2018
    Assignee: Altera Corporation
    Inventors: Jiefan Zhang, Abdel Hafiz Rabi, Allen Chen, Mark Jonathan Lewis
  • Patent number: 10128850
    Abstract: The present disclosure provides systems and methods for improving operation of integrated circuit device including a logic region, which includes a plurality of logic gates that operate based at least in part on a clock signal to facilitate providing a target function, and a clock tree, which includes a clock switch block that receives a source clock signal from a clock source and a branch communicatively coupled between the clock switch block and the logic region, in which the branch operates to provide the clock signal to the logic region based at least in part on the source clock signal and the branch includes a tunable delay buffer that operates to apply a delay to the clock signal based at least in part on a clock skew expected to be introduced by the branch.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 9, 2017
    Date of Patent: November 13, 2018
    Assignee: Altera Corporation
    Inventor: Boon Haw Ooi
  • Patent number: 10127341
    Abstract: Systems and methods for reconfiguration of a hardened intellectual property (IP) block in an integrated circuit (IC) device are provided. Reconfiguration of the hardened IP block in the IC device may transition between functions supported by the hardened IP block. A transition may occur as a pre-configured profile is selected to reconfigure the hardened IP block. Further, configuration data associated with each of the pre-configured profiles of the hardened IP block may be generated and storage space to store the configuration data may be created. Additionally, reconfiguration control logic to read and implement the configuration data in hard IP design primitives may also be generated.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 24, 2017
    Date of Patent: November 13, 2018
    Assignee: Altera Corporation
    Inventors: Jakob Raymond Jones, Prasanna Padmanabhan
  • Patent number: 10127190
    Abstract: The present invention provides a hybrid programmable logic device which includes a programmable field programmable gate array logic fabric and a many-core distributed processing subsystem. The device integrates both a fabric of programmable logic elements and processors in the same device, i.e., the same chip. The programmable logic elements may be sized and arranged such that place and route tools can address the processors and logic elements as a homogenous routing fabric. The programmable logic elements may provide hardware acceleration functions to the processors that can be defined after the device is fabricated. The device may include scheduling circuitry that can schedule the transmission of data on horizontal and vertical connectors in the logic fabric to transmit data between the programmable logic elements and processor in an asynchronous manner.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 27, 2017
    Date of Patent: November 13, 2018
    Assignee: ALTERA CORPORATION
    Inventors: Michael D. Hutton, Anargyros Krikelis
  • Patent number: 10129013
    Abstract: Techniques to operate circuitry in an integrated circuit are provided. The circuitry may include rate detection circuitry, receiver circuitry, and configuration circuitry. The receiver circuitry may receive a data stream with an arbitrary data rate. The rate detection circuitry may receive a reference clock signal that is associated with the received data stream. The rate detection circuitry determines the frequency of the reference clock signal such that an appropriate clock signal may be generated for the receiver circuitry. The receiver clock signal may be generated by clock generation circuitry that is coupled to the rate detection circuitry. The configuration circuitry may accordingly configure the receiver circuitry based at least on the determined frequency of the reference clock signal so that the receiver circuitry may operate at the arbitrary data rate.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 25, 2017
    Date of Patent: November 13, 2018
    Assignee: Altera Corporation
    Inventors: Boon Hong Oh, Chee Seng Tan, Chau Perng Chin
  • Patent number: 10127013
    Abstract: Integrated circuits with specialized processing blocks that can support both fixed-point and floating-point operations are provided. A specialized processing block of this type may include partial product generators, compression circuits, and a main adder. The main adder may include a high adder, a middle adder, a low adder, floating-point rounding circuitry, and associated selection circuitry. The middle adder may include prefix networks for outputting generate and propagate vectors, and redundant LSB processing logic for outputting LSB generate and propagate bits. The middle adder may include additional logic circuitry for generating a sum output, a sum-plus-1 output, and a sum-plus-2 output. The specialized processing block may further include accumulation circuitry for support multiply-accumulation functions for any suitable number of channels.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 23, 2016
    Date of Patent: November 13, 2018
    Assignee: Altera Corporation
    Inventor: Martin Langhammer
  • Patent number: 10121534
    Abstract: In one embodiment, an integrated circuit includes a pass gate circuit and a memory element circuit. The pass gate circuit receives a user signal that toggles between a high voltage level and a low voltage level. The memory element circuit outputs a control signal to control the pass gate circuit. The control signal may be asserted to be greater than the high voltage level when activating the pass gate circuit or the control signal may be deasserted to be less than the low voltage level when deactivating the pass gate circuit. In addition to that, a method on how to operate the pass gate circuit is also provided.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 18, 2015
    Date of Patent: November 6, 2018
    Assignee: Altera Corporation
    Inventor: Andy L. Lee
  • Patent number: 10120969
    Abstract: Systems and methods for generating and deploying integrated circuit (IC) applications are provided. Global variable implementation logic may be used to optimize implementation, on an integrated circuit, of functionality represented by high-level code including global variables. A compiler's intermediate representation is analyzed for one or more characteristics that may be used to determine one or more initialization parameters, one or more scope parameters, one or more implementation parameters, or any combination thereof of the functionality. An HDL is generated based upon the one or more initialization parameters, the one or more scope parameters, the one or more implementation parameters, or the any combination thereof.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 30, 2016
    Date of Patent: November 6, 2018
    Assignee: Altera Corporation
    Inventors: Byron Sinclair, Andrew Chaang Ling, John Stuart Freeman
  • Patent number: 10114941
    Abstract: The invention discloses a method of authenticating data stored in an integrated circuit. The method includes storing randomized data in the integrated circuit such that the randomized data occupies each address space of the memory circuit that is not occupied by the stored data. The method also includes generating a first digital signature using the integrated circuit in response to authenticating a concatenation of the stored data and the first copy of randomized data. The method further includes generating a second digital signature in response to authenticating concatenation of a manufacturer-provided copy of the stored data and the second copy of randomized data using a computer-implemented authentication application and authenticating the data stored in the integrated circuit according to whether the first signature matches the second signature.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 24, 2016
    Date of Patent: October 30, 2018
    Assignee: Altera Corporation
    Inventor: Bruce B. Pedersen
  • Patent number: 10114068
    Abstract: An integrated circuit capable of monitoring aging effects on an integrated circuit device is disclosed. The integrated circuit includes a control circuit that obtains a clock signal at different frequencies. A sense circuit may receive the clock signal. First and second control signals may be asserted on the integrated circuit with the control circuit. The first control signal may activate a stress mode, and the second control signal may activate a measurement mode. During stress mode, the sense circuit may receive the clock signal. Any changes in predetermined electrical parameters of one or more transistors in the sense circuit may be monitored and measured during the measurement mode. Aging compensation may be performed when aging effect is detected on the sense circuit.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 22, 2013
    Date of Patent: October 30, 2018
    Assignee: Altera Corporation
    Inventors: Christopher Sun Young Chen, Jeffrey T. Watt
  • Patent number: 10110225
    Abstract: An input/output (I/O) circuit for an integrated circuit includes an input-output terminal, a termination circuit and an impedance compensation circuit. The termination circuit includes a node that is coupled to the input-output terminal. The termination circuit exhibits substantially constant first impedance below a first frequency of signals received at the input-output terminal. Furthermore, the termination circuit exhibits second impedance that is less than the first impedance when signals having a second frequency that is higher than the first frequency are received at the input-output terminal. The impedance compensation circuit is coupled to the input-output terminal. The impedance compensation circuit compensates for differences between the first and second impendences when the signal having the second frequency that is higher than the first frequency is received at the input-output terminal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 2, 2016
    Date of Patent: October 23, 2018
    Assignee: Altera Corporation
    Inventors: Ker Yon Lau, Tat Hin Tan, Choong Kit Wong