Patent ID: 7636795

Claim:
A method, comprising: checking a feature permission register for a device to determine whether a feature on the device is permitted to be enabled; determining whether a current count of enabled features on the device is less than a maximum number of allowable features on the device, the maximum number of allowable features on the device being a value programmed into a feature count designator register for the device; and associating each device feature with one or more credit values; adding the associated one or more credit values of all enabled device features; and allowing the enabling of the device feature if the device feature is permitted to be enabled, the total number of enabled features on the device is less than the maximum number of allowable features on the device, and the sum of the credit values of all enabled device features is less than the maximum number of allowable credit values, wherein the feature permission register and the feature count designator register are programmable only once and thereafter permanently hard-wired with their respective values.