Patent ID: 7865675

Claim:
Apparatus for processing data comprising: a programmable general purpose processor operating under program instruction control to perform data processing operations; a memory system coupled to said processor, said memory system operating to store data values to be processed by said processor; a hardware accelerator coupled to said processor and to said memory system, said hardware accelerator having at least one register storing respective data values that are temporary variables to be processed by said hardware accelerator, said data values within said at least one register being read from said memory system and cached within said at least one register; and memory system monitoring circuitry, separate from said processor and coupled to said hardware accelerator and said memory system, said memory system monitoring circuitry generating a trigger signal in response to at least one predetermined memory operation being preformed upon said memory system by said processor, wherein said hardware accelerator is responsive to said trigger signal to halt processing performed by said hardware accelerator and to perform a cleaning operation whereby any data values within said at least one register differing from the corresponding data values within said memory system are written back to said memory system.