US Patent 7496788 Watchdog monitoring for unit status reporting

Systems and methods for monitoring the accuracy of unit status reporting within an application specific integrated circuit device may be used reduce power consumption. Accurate status reporting of an idle state is needed to safely disable a clock signal for a unit in order to reduce the power needed by that unit. A watchdog monitor may be used during functional simulation and synthesized for formal verification, emulation, and functional device testing and debugging. The watchdog monitor may also be configured based on specific characteristics of the unit that it is monitoring.