SOFTWARE DEFINED FIFO MEMORY FOR STORING A SET OF DATA FROM A STREAM OF SOURCE DATA

A local FIFO memory 2 is provided within a local RAM memory 4 to provide access to source data values. A local controller 10 manages the asynchronous fetching of source data values to the local FIFO memory 2 and the optional writing back of these data values after processing to a source/sync memory 32. One or more local head pointers and one or more local tail pointers are used by the local memory controller 10 to manage storage within the local FIFO memory 2 which is configured as a circular buffer; The remaining space within the local RAM 4 may be used for further data and the partitioning between FIFO operation and further data storage is programmable such that the same memory storage 2 can be used for multiple purposes as required.