Patent ID: 7458039

Claim:
A method for use in the manufacture of an integrated circuit, the method comprising: providing a library of pre-designed specialized stream processing circuit ( 10 a - c ) design data; generating integrated circuit design data of an integrated circuit that incorporates selected ones of the stream processing circuits ( 10 a - c ) at selected positions along a stream processing chain in an integrated circuit, by including the stream processing circuit design data substantially without modifying the stream processing circuit design data ( 10 a - c ); adding local control circuits ( 11 ) to the integrated circuit design, each coupled to a control parameter input of a respective stream processing circuit ( 10 a - c ) that requires at least one variable control parameter value, the local control circuits ( 11 ) being arranged to control timing of control parameter updates by counting off block size dependent time intervals between times points of successive control parameter updates; adding a common control circuit ( 14 ) to the integrated circuit design, for supplying instructions to the local control circuits ( 11 ), the instructions specifying block sizes and parameter values.