Patent ID: 9678870
Date: 2017-06-13
CPC Classifications: G06F

Claim:
1. A diagnostic apparatus for monitoring a parameter of an integrated circuit, the apparatus comprising: a diagnostic data buffer constituting a volatile memory; a non-volatile memory capable of receiving data from the diagnostic data buffer; a data buffer controller operably coupled to the diagnostic data buffer and having an event alert input and a data channel monitoring input for receiving diagnostic data; a buffer status memory comprising a state indicative of a protected status and a state indicative of an unprotected status; and a data transfer controller; wherein the diagnostic data buffer receives, when the state of the buffer status memory is indicative of the unprotected state, at least part of the diagnostic data received by the data buffer controller via the data channel monitoring input thereof; the data buffer controller sets the state of the buffer status memory to be indicative of the protected state in response to receipt of an event alert received via the event alert input; and the data transfer controller monitors, when in use, the buffer status memory and copies a portion of the diagnostic data buffer to the non-volatile memory for subsequent analysis in response to the buffer status memory being set to be indicative of the protected state, wherein the data buffer controller is arranged to prevent transfer of the at least part of the diagnostic data to the diagnostic data buffer when the buffer status memory is in the protected state.