Patent ID: 7809991

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a qualification system to qualify data on an associated bus for capture and to provide a qualification signal as a function of at least one signal that describes a characteristic of the data on the associated bus; a data capture system to store qualified data from the associated bus in response to receiving the qualification signal and a single trigger signal at the data capture system, the trigger signal defining a capture session; and an analysis system including a programmable state machine to transition to different states according to monitored conditions on the associated bus, wherein the analysis system is configured to output the trigger signal, wherein the programmable state machine has three or more states; and wherein the analysis system is programmable to provide different behaviors based on programming received at an input of the analysis system, wherein the analysis system being programmed to provide different behaviors causes the programmable state machine to transition differently among the three or more states of the state machine in response to monitored conditions on the associated bus.