Patent attributes
Some embodiments of the invention provide a configuration/debug network for configuring and debugging a configurable integrated circuit (IC). The configurable IC in some embodiments includes configurable resources (e.g., configurable logic resources, routing resources, memory resources, etc.) that can be grouped in conceptual configurable tiles that are arranged in several rows and columns. Some embodiments allow tiles to be individually addressed, globally addressed (i.e., all addressed together), or addressed based on their tile types. The configurable IC includes numerous user-design state elements (“UDS elements”) in some embodiments. In some embodiments, the configuration/debug network has a streaming mode that can direct various circuits in one or more configurable tiles to stream out their data during the operation of the configurable IC. Accordingly, in the embodiments where the configuration/debug network connects to some or all of the UDS elements, the configurable/debug network can be used in a streaming mode to stream out data from the UDS elements of the tiles, in order to identify any errors in the operation of the IC. In other words, the streaming of the data from the UDS elements can be used to debug the operation of the configurable IC. In some embodiments, the configuration/debug network has a broadcasting mode that can direct various resources (e.g., memories, storage elements, etc.) in one or more configurable tiles to store the same data. For instance, the broadcasting mode can be used to initialize the memory blocks in the configurable memory tiles.
