A system and method are disclosed for generating triggers within a
hardware emulator. The system allows for dynamic reconfiguration of the
trigger generation scheme during emulation. In one aspect, input probe
signals are received on an address port to a memory from an integrated
circuit within the emulator. The memory outputs from a data port, data,
which is addressed, at least in part, by the input probe signals. The
data output from the data port may be sent through further combinatorial
logic or directly connected to a logic analyzer and represents trigger
information. In another aspect, the trigger generation scheme may be
reconfigured dynamically during emulation. For example, where the memory
is a dual-port RAM, an emulation host can write to the memory to perform
the reconfiguration.