Patent ID: 8918680

Claim:
An apparatus to control an external interface in an integrated circuit, the apparatus comprising: a plurality of command sources, wherein each of the plurality of command sources is configured to provide an independent sequence of commands, wherein a first command source is a command queue and a second command source is a macro memory; a trace queue comprising a plurality of entries, wherein each of the plurality of entries is configured to store data describing a respective command; and a control circuit coupled to the plurality of command sources and the trace queue, wherein the control circuit is configured to select commands from the plurality of command sources for processing, and wherein the control circuit is configured to write data corresponding to the selected commands to the trace queue in an order of processing even in a case that consecutive commands are selected from different ones of the plurality of command sources, and wherein the control circuit is configured to process commands from the macro memory responsive to a macro command in the command queue, and wherein the control circuit is configured to write data describing the macro command to a first entry of the trace queue, and wherein the control circuit is configured to write data describing an initial command from the macro memory to a second entry of the trace queue, and wherein the first entry is adjacent to the second entry.