Patent ID: 7237100

Claim:
A method for handling operations within a hardware device, comprising: providing within the device information regarding an operation, the operation having a predetermined responsive output as encoded within a transaction lookup table and an alternative responsive output stored in a register, the provided information including information identifying the operation; selecting at least some of the identifying information of the operation to output to a comparator and the transaction lookup table, by employing a masking register that filters the at least some of the identifying information of the operation for output to the comparator, the masking register being logically AND'ed with all the identifying information of the operation and having binary ones corresponding to the at least some of the identifying information to output to the comparator and binary zeros corresponding to other of the identifying information not output to the comparator, output of the comparator and output of the transaction lookup table being input into a multiplexer; selecting the alternative responsive output for the operation instead of the predetermined responsive output based upon the comparator comparing the selected identifying information to the operation resulting in a match between the selected identifying information and the operation directing the multiplexer to output the alternative responsive output, such that the multiplexer effectively converts at least some of the information regarding the operation based upon the selected identifying information; and executing the operation based upon the converted information.