Divicom Inc.

Other

C-cube Microsystems, Inc.

Electrolux Home Products, Inc.

C-cube Semiconductor II Inc.

Winnov, L.p.

Christopher Mills

Christopher R Adams

Gordon A Charles

Thomas R Ayers

Todd Brooks

Michael P Lenihan

Kiran Kumar Rao

Olivier Garbe

Vikas Venkatramana Naik

Randy Anderson

Santosh Venkappa Pujer

Pickup for string instruments and electric guitars

A pickup for stringed instruments with an interposed tone-altering signals process is described herein. In one aspect, the pickup can include a first coil wound around a first plurality of pole pieces, where a first end of the first coil is coupled directly to an amplifier output; a second coil wound around a second plurality of pole pieces; and a tone-altering signal processor coupled to an end of the second coil and the amplifier output.

Humbucker pickup for string instruments with interposed tone-altering signal processor

An oven including a chamber defining an oven cavity with an open front. A rack assembly is slidable between a retracted position and an extended position relative to the chamber. A door is provided for closing the open front. A hinge assembly connects the door to the rack assembly. The hinge assembly allows the door to slide between a first position and a second position with respect to the rack assembly. The hinge assembly includes a lock assembly for locking the rack assembly in the extended position. The lock assembly is moveable between a locked position and an unlocked position. The lock assembly is in the unlocked position when the door is in the first position thereby allowing the rack assembly to freely moved, and the lock assembly is in the locked position when the door is in the second position thereby securing the rack assembly in the extended position.

Cooking oven with cavity drawer having movable door

A pickup with variable coil windings for string instruments is described herein. In one aspect, the pickup including a coil including a first subsection wound around a first subset of pole pieces of a plurality of pole pieces; and a second subsection wound around a set of pole pieces of the plurality of pole pieces, the set of pole pieces selected from the group of: the plurality of pole pieces in its entirety and a second subset of pole pieces different than the first subset of pole pieces.

Pickup with variable coil windings for string instruments

One aspect of the invention provides a pickup for a string instrument. The pickup includes: a plurality of pole pieces arranged along a non-linear path and a wire coil formed around said plurality of pole pieces and having a profile corresponding to said non-linear path. Another aspect of the invention provides a string instrument including: the pickup as described herein and a plurality of strings. Each string of said plurality of strings passes over a respective pole piece of said plurality of pole pieces.

Non-linear pickup for string instruments

A method and apparatus for preventing interference between simultaneously-running processes in a set top box processing system which attempt to access certain shared processing hardware such as a drawing acceleration engine. A graphics processor or other device such as a CPU associated with the processor includes a register with an acquire bit portion and a process identifier portion. When a given process requests access to a graphics engine or other shared processing hardware, a determination is made as to whether the acquire bit of the register is set. A set acquire bit indicates that some process has already been granted access to the engine. If the acquire bit is not set, the requesting process is granted access to the engine, and its process identifier is stored in the process identifier portion of the register. If the acquire bit is already set when the given process requests access to the engine, the identifier for that process is compared to the identifier stored in the process identifier portion of the register. If the identifiers match, the requesting process is granted access. The lack of a match between the identifiers indicates that a different process has previously been granted access to the engine, and the requesting process is therefore denied access to the engine. When a process granted access to the engine no longer requires access, the acquire bit is cleared.

Processing system with register-based process sharing

Methods and apparatus for ATM segmentation and reassembly (SAR) which provide efficient transfer of ATM cell data between an ATM network and a set top box or other processing system. Reassembly operations are performed using a receive ring which stores an array of pointers. Each of the pointers specifies the address of a cell buffer suitable for storing a received ATM cell. Received ATM cells are first filtered to determine if the cells should be accepted. When a given cell is accepted, a pointer retrieved from the receive ring is used to determine the address of a cell buffer in which that cell will be stored. Host CPU software directing the operation of the SAR device periodically services the receive ring to prevent overflow. The host CPU software services the receive ring by sequentially stepping through the ring entries and linking the pointer for each stored cell into a chain of pointers maintained for the VCI on which that stored cell was received. The pointers which are linked into a chain are removed from the receive ring and replaced with pointers to empty cell buffers so that additional receive cells can be processed and stored. When an end-of-frame indicator is detected in a cell received on a given VCI, the host CPU software uses the pointers in the chain maintained for that VCI, as well as any pointers for that VCI remaining in the receive ring, to reassemble an AAL5 frame. Segmentation operations are performed using a transmit ring and similar pointer-based processing.

Processing system with pointer-based ATM segmentation and reassembly

A method and apparatus for prescaling graphics data for use in a graphics overlay operating mode of a set top box processing system. RGB pixel data for a given pixel are first converted to luminance and chrominance data for that pixel. The luminance and chrominance data are then prescaled by a blending value associated with the given pixel. An interpolation operation is performed on the luminance and chrominance data as well as on the blending value for the given pixel using corresponding luminance and chrominance data and blending values for at least one other pixel in the stream. This interpolation may include operations such as horizontal filtering and may also include chroma filtering to convert the luminance and chrominance data into a 4:2:2 chrominance format compatible with MPEG-2 video. The interpolation operation produces interpolated luminance and chrominance data and an interpolated blending value for the given pixel. A video signal to be combined with the graphics data is then scaled using the interpolated blending value. The scaled video signal is combined with the interpolated luminance and chrominance data for the given pixel to provide a combined video/graphics signal suitable for display.

Processing system with graphics data prescaling

A method and apparatus for dynamic alteration of a color look-up table (CLUT) pallet identifier in response to one or more key codes placed in an input data stream. An input data stream including a sequence of input data blocks is converted into a stream suitable for addressing a look-up table. The look-up table may be a 256.times.16 table which requires an 8-bit address to identify a particular table entry. The invention allows such a table to be addressed using 4-bit data blocks in the input data stream. For each received 4-bit data block in the input data stream, a determination is made as to whether that block corresponds to a predetermined key value. If a given input block does not correspond to the predetermined key value, the 4-bit input block is combined with a previously-stored 4-bit pallet identifier to generate an 8-bit address into the look-up table. The pallet identifier specifies one of 16 different 16-entry pallets within the 256.times.16 look-up table. If the given input block does correspond to the key value, a new 4-bit pallet identifier is stored. The new pallet identifier may be contained within a data block which immediately follows the key value block in the data stream. The new pallet identifier is then used in combination with subsequent 4-bit data blocks in the stream to generate 8-bit addresses into the look-up table.

Processing system with dynamic alteration of a color look-up table

A method and apparatus for single-buffered display capture which eliminates a 'tearing' problem inherent in certain conventional video display techniques. A video signal including a sequence of frames each having an even field and an odd field is applied to a video capture circuit. First and second sets of lines each representing a different subset of all the lines in a given even or odd field are captured in the video capture circuit and displayed by a video display circuit. The video capture circuit captures the first set of lines in an even field of the video signal during a time period in which the video display circuit displays the second set of lines in the even field. The video capture circuit also captures the second set of lines in an odd field of the video signal during a time period in which the video display circuit displays the first set of lines in the odd field. The video capture circuit utilizes an odd-numbered decimation factor to determine the first and second sets of lines from among all lines in the even and odd fields.

Processing system with single-buffered display capture

A method and apparatus for differential video data encoding which utilizes a reduced number of bits per pixel to encode chroma and luma components of a video data stream. A 4-bit absolute code is determined for a given 8-bit luma or chroma component in the data stream. The determined absolute code is indicative of a particular one of a plurality of ranges into which the given component falls. The given component is encoded using the determined absolute code if the absolute code produces a lower encoding error than a 4-bit delta code which encodes the component as a difference relative to a previously-encoded component. If the delta code produces a lower encoding error than the determined absolute code, the given component is encoded using the delta code. In a situation in which the given component is the first component of its type on a line of video, an absolute code may be used regardless of whether or not the absolute code produces a higher encoding error than the delta code.

Processing system with delta-based video data encoding

A method and apparatus for use in a set top box processing system to permit simultaneous utilization of two system clocks in applications in which certain processing system elements utilize one system clock operating at a non-integer multiple of another system clock used by other processing system elements. A synchronous phase detector is used to generate a clock enable signal suitable for use in a pipeline structure to facilitate data transfer between the different elements of the processing system. The clock enable signal includes phase information extracted from the first and second clock signals, and is suitable for use in driving one or more multiplexers in a pipeline structure or other state-based logic device to thereby allow data transfer between an element of the processing system operating at the first clock rate and an element operating at the second clock rate.

Processing system with simultaneous utilization of multiple clock signals

A computer architecture that can rapidly perform a variety of repetitive mathematical operations on multimedia data sets comprises a data processing engine having n data processing devices, each of which includes shift registers and multiplexers for organizing input data into bit slices such that each of the n data processing devices can receive one bit of information from n data samples. Look-up operations are performed in a table memory of each of the n data processing devices on a bit slice, the table memory containing all possible combinations of a constant function. The results of the look-ups are shifted and accumulated to simultaneously generate multiple outputs of a convolution of an input function with the constant function. A data path provides information transfer between each of the n data processing devices.

Growing community of inventors

Santa Clara, CA, United States of America

Christopher Mills