Patent ID: 7805766

Claim:
An electronic system, comprising: a plurality of function cards including at least one router card, a plurality of input cards and a plurality of output cards, each having at least one programmable device residing thereon; a configuration control card coupled to each one of said plurality of function cards, wherein said configuration control card configures said at least one programmable device residing on each one of said plurality of function cards in response to a request for hardware configuration, wherein said configuration control card comprises a main controller; a memory subsystem residing on said configuration control card, wherein said configuration control card configures said at least one programmable device residing on each one of said plurality of function cards using configuration information stored in said memory subsystem; wherein said main controller is coupled to said memory subsystem; said main controller configuring each one of said plurality of function cards using said configuration information stored in said memory subsystem; and a peripheral controller residing on each one of said plurality of function cards, wherein said main controller is coupled to said plurality of function cards via the peripheral controller associated with each function card of the plurality of function cards; each one of said peripheral controllers attending to: (1) forwarding the requests for configuration, originated by said programmable device residing with said peripheral controller on one of said function cards, to said main controller; and (2) attending to forwarding configuration information, provided by said main controller to said programmable device residing with said peripheral controller on one of said function cards.