Patent ID: 8473272

Claim:
A method for preparing a system that is reconfigurable to implement a plurality of optional hardware functions, comprising: simulating operation of the system during a time interval by executing a model of the system; wherein the system is reconfigurable to implement a subset of the optional hardware functions; wherein the model includes a query function and a plurality of parameters for including and excluding the optional hardware functions in the execution of the model of the system, and the query function queries the plurality of parameters; wherein the simulating includes determining which of the optional hardware functions are active and which of the optional hardware functions are inactive during a plurality of subintervals of the time interval by tracking queries of the parameters by the query function during the subintervals; wherein the execution of the model includes and excludes the optional hardware functions in response to the queries of the parameters during the subintervals; estimating respective circuit resource sets for the subintervals of the time interval; wherein for each of the subintervals the respective circuit resource set implements the system including the optional hardware functions that are active during the subinterval; and storing information describing the respective circuit resource sets for the subintervals.