Patent ID: 8255678

Claim:
A method of booting a processing device having an application processing unit and an access processing unit, the processing device being selectably bootable in one of a stand-alone configuration and a bridge configuration; wherein, in the stand-alone configuration, the access processing unit and the application processing unit are both initialized to be operational, and wherein in the bridge configuration only the access processing unit is initialized to be operational and is initialized to be in operational connection with an external processing unit via a communications interface, the method comprising the steps of: determining by the access processing unit, whether the processing device is to be booted in the standalone configuration or in the bridge configuration, wherein the access processing unit determines that the device is to be booted in the bride configuration when the access processing unit receives bridge configuration information from the application processing unit; if the processing device is to be booted in the bridge configuration, receiving a boot mode indication from the external processing unit via the communications interface, the boot mode indication being indicative of whether the processing device is to be booted in a service mode in which the processing device is configured to load software from the external processing unit into a non-volatile memory of the processing device; and, responsive to the received boot mode indication, booting the processing device in said service mode.