Patent 7739520 was granted and assigned to Infineon Technologies on June, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The invention relates to a data processing device with a functionally programmable logic circuit and a programming interface. An authorization control unit is provided, which protects the programming interface against an unauthorized access. This enables the functions of a semiconductor module to be changed in a customer-specific manner while preventing unauthorized entities from subsequently changing the functionality.