Thursday, August 28, 2008
NASDAQ-listed O2 Micro International Ltd. (George Town, Cayman Islands), a company with offices in Taiwan and China, has been granted U.S. patent number 7,391,237 for its field programmable gate array architecture upgrade.
O2 Micro's firewall product, SifoWorks, is based on this technology, the company said.
According to the patent abstract, the technology comprises an FPGA, a flash non-volatile memory and a complex programmable logic device. The Flash memory includes a first section configured to store a workable version of bit files for the FPGA and a second section configured to store a backup version of bit files for the FPGA. The CPLD is coupled to the FPGA and the flash memory. The CPLD is configured to download the bit files from flash to the FPGA to provide the FPGA with functionality. As a result, the CPLD communicates with a host processor to upgrade the bit files in the flash memory and indicates to the host processor which version of bit file has been downloaded to the FPGA.
In essence it is a system engineered to allow multiple "personalities" to be retained and loaded on to a FPGA presumably as part of a security system.
Founded in April 1995, O2 Micro develops and markets power management, and security components and systems. Products include intelligent lighting systems, battery management, power Management, and security products, such as virtual private networks and firewalls.
By: DocMemory
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