Patent ID: 7350202

Claim:
A reprogrammable firmware state machine device comprising: a program memory for storing programmable data relating to at least one of state machine states and state machine state transitions of the firmware state machine device; a start address memory location supporting one of atomic and pseudo-atomic write operations of data to the entire location and for storing data indicative of a start address of firmware state machine device programming stored within the programmable memory, the data indicative of a start address of the firmware state machine device, the start address reprogrammable during operation of the firmware state machine device; where no other memory access operation is performable by the reprogrammable state machine during the duration of the one of the atomic and pseudo-atomic write operation once the one of the atomic and pseudo-atomic write operation bas commenced, the one of the atomic and pseudo-atomic write operation being other than a suspension of the firmware state machine device pending receipt of user data; and where completion of at least one of the atomic and pseudo-atomic write operations results in storing at least data within the program memory, the data pertaining to a reprogramming of the state machine with a new first machine state at a new first state address for a subsequent execution by the firmware state machine device.