A method for operating a control unit, the control unit including a software-controlled main processing unit, a strictly hardware-based model calculation unit for calculating an algorithm, for carrying out a Bayesian regression method, based on configuration data, and a memory unit, a model memory area being defined in the memory unit to which a configuration register block for providing the configuration data in the model calculation unit is assigned, a calculation start-configuration register being assigned the highest address in the configuration register block into which configuration data are written, the writing into of which starts the calculation in the model calculation unit, the configuration data being written in a memory area of the memory unit from the model memory area into the configuration register block with an incremental copying process, the addresses being copied in the incremental copying process in ascending order.