Fast reconfigurable programmable device

1. Field of the Invention A programmable cell comprises an externally loadable electrically erasable (EE) transistor cell that is configured to be independent of the currently active state of the programmed cell. When all of the EE cells are loaded with a new configuration, the contents of all of the EE cells are loaded into the corresponding programmable cells, preferably within one clock cycle. Because the entirety of the programmable cells can be pre-loaded with the new configuration, the time to effect a reconfiguration is one clock cycle. Because an EE cell is significantly smaller than a conventional four to six transistor storage cell, the area required to implement this single-clock-cycle reconfiguration capability is substantially less than traditional dynamically reprogrammable memory configurations. In an alternative embodiment, multiple EE cells can be associated with each programmable cell, thereby allowing a multiple-configuration capability.