1. A reprogrammable state machine comprising: a program memory for storing programmable data relating to at least one of state machine states and state machine state transitions; and, a start address memory location supporting one of atomic and pseudo-atomic write operations of data to the entire location and for storing data indicative of a start address of state machine programming stored within the programmable memory, the data indicative of a start address reprogrammable during operation of the state machine, where no other memory access operation is performable by the reprogrammable state machine during the duration of the one of the atomic and pseudo-atomic write operation once the one of the atomic and pseudo-atomic write operation has commenced.