USOO6340897B1 (12) United States Patent (10) Patent No.: US 6,340,897 B1 Lytle et al. (45) Date of Patent: *Jan. 22, 2002 (54) PROGRAMMABLE LOGICARRAY FOREIGN PATENT DOCUMENTS INTEGRATED CIRCUIT WITH GENERAL EP OO81917 8/1983 PURPOSE MEMORY CONFIGURABLE ASA EP O410759 A2 1/1991 RANDOM ACCESS OR FIFO MEMORY EP O415542 A2 3/1991 (75) Inventors: Craig S. Lytle, Mountain View; (List continued on next page.) Donald F. Faria, San Jose, both of CA (US) OTHER PUBLICATIONS Matsumoto, Rodney T., “Configurable On-Chip RAM (73) ASSignee: Altera Corporation, San Jose, CA Incorporated into Hign Speed Logic Array," IEEE Custom (US) Integrated Circuits Conference, Jun. 1985, CH2157–6/85/ (*) Notice: Subject to any disclaimer, the term of this 0000–0240, pp. 240–243. patent is extended or adjusted under 35 Landry, Steve, “Application-Specific ICs, Relying on RAM, U.S.C. 154(b) by 0 days. Implement Almost Any Logic Function,” Electronic Design, Oct. 31, 1985, pp. 123–130. This patent is Subject to a terminal dis Bursky, Dave, “Shrink Systems with One-Chip Decoder, claimer. EPROM, and RAM,” Electronic Design, Jul. 28, 1988, pp. 91-94. (21) Appl. No.: 09/481,781 Kawana, Keiichi et al., “An Efficient Logic Block Intercon nect Architecture for User-Reprogrammable Gate Array,” (22) Filed: Jan. 11, 2000 IEEE 1990 Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, May Related U.S. Application Data 1990, CH2860–5/90/0000–0164, pp. 31.3.1-4 (List continued on next page.) (63) Continuation of application No. 08/707,705, filed on Jul. 24, 1996, now Pat. No. 6,049,223, which is a continuation-in Primary Examiner Michael Tokar part of application No. 08/408.510, filed on Mar. 22, 1995, ASSistant Examiner Steven S. Paik now Pat. No. 5,572,148. (74) Attorney, Agent, or Firm Townsend and Townsend (51) Int. Cl............................................... H03K 19/177 and Crew LLP (52) U.S. Cl. .............................. 326/40; 326/39; 326/41 (57) ABSTRACT (58) Field of Search .............................. 326/38, 39, 40, 326/41; 36.5/221 A programmable logic device integrated circuit incorporat ing a memory block. The memory block (250) is a general (56) References Cited purpose memory configurable as a random access memory U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS (RAM) or a first-in first-out (FIFO) memory. In one 4,198,744 4/1980 embodiment, the organization of memory block (250) may 4.293.783 10/1981 Nilay - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - C. have variable word size and depth size. Memory block (250) 4,441,167 4/1984 Principi. ... 36.5/94 is coupled to a programmable interconnect array (213). 4,617.479 10/1986 Hartmann et al. .......... 307/465 Signals from the programmable interconnect array (213) 4,670,749 6/1987 Freeman ................ 340/825.85 may be programmably coupled to the data, address, and 4,706,216 11/1987 Carter . 365/94 control inputs of the memory block. Data output and Status 4,780,846 10/1988 Tanabe et al. ................ 365/63 flag Signals from the memory block are programmably 4,825.414 4/1989 Kawata ...................... 365/189 coupled to the programmable interconnect array (213). 4,831,591 5/1989 ImaZeki et al. ........ 365/189.08 (List continued on next page.) 52 Claims, 13 Drawing Sheets g fiel agg 5. 205 Eas 209s 2012iy 2f; s H LAB gig 203 as LAB s 220-223-27 23-217-220 S. 'Isis 2:23 SIas - AE Le - s PA ECH HKS g s - LAS LAB -- s s 650 683- 803 572 2. 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