International Business Machines Corporation

Eugene R Jones

Merle E Houdek

William Frank Micka

Charles Porter Geer

Frank G Soltis

Glen R Mitchell

William G Kempke

James Gregory Ranweiler

Thomas S Robinson

Thomas M Walker

Michael Alfred Goolsbey

Gary G Benson

Lam Q Dang

John A Soyring

A field of scanned video pels is first broken up into cells representing small portions of characters to be recognized, according to a first set of logics. A second set of logics then recombines the cells into blocks containing individual characters separated from their neighbors.

Locating individual images in a field for recognition or the like

Apparatus for compressing and buffering large amounts of data, transferring the buffered data to a slower speed storage device and controlling the stopping and starting of the central processing unit (CPU) is provided for a virtual storage computer system where the data is collected in real time; the data being collected are all storage addresses to facilitate address tracing. Each real main storage address is collected to the external interface between the central processing unit (CPU) and main storage and converted to a virtual address. The virtual address is compressed and entered into a large buffer via buffer control logic. The buffer control logic sends a signal to stop the CPU when the buffer becomes full and restarts it at the exact point it had stopped after the buffer has been emptied by the transfer of data from it to a slower speed storage device.

Apparatus for compressing and buffering data

Tagged pointer handling apparatus is provided for implementation in a computer system wherein a tag bit is provided for each word in main storage. This invention provides for the mixing of data and pointers within the same storage space, and provides a capability for checking and verifying the validity of the pointers without affecting the performance or operation of other instructions. Only the tag instructions can set the tag bits ON in main storage; all other instructions store data and set the corresponding tag bits OFF. Thus, if a pointer was modified inadvertently by one of these data handling instructions, the fact that the pointer is untagged is detected and the values in the pointer are treated as invalid when the pointer is used by the Load and Verify Tags instruction. Instructions to load, store, set, move, extract and insert tags are implemented by the tagged pointer handling apparatus. A Load and Verify Tags instruction checks the validity of the pointer and if valid, loads the pointer into a specified general purpose register. A Store and Set Tags instruction stores the value in a specified general purpose register into main storage and sets the associated tag bits ON. A Move and Set Tags instruction moves a word from one location in main storage to another or the same location in main storage and sets the associated tag bits ON. A Move Characters and Tags instruction moves a word and the associated tag bits from one storage location to another storage location. An Extract Tags instruction fetches each word from an operand in main storage, extracts the tag bits, compresses the tag bits to one tag bit per quadword, and stores the tag bits in main storage as data. An Insert Tags instruction fetches the tag bits stored in main storage as data, expands the tag bits to one tag bit per word, and inserts them on each associated word of an operand in main storage.

Tagged pointer handling apparatus

An optical scanner converts input images into video snapshots which are recognized at fixed intervals, independently of the presence of patterns. Sense generators identify the presence of pattern left and right sides in the snapshots, independently of the recognition unit. A direction detector determines whether the scanner is moving from left to right or vice versa. A composition unit converts the fixed-interval recognitions into a single output code for each input pattern, eliminating duplicate and incorrect data.

Post-recognition segmentation for pattern-recognition machines

Growing community of inventors

Rochester, MN, United States of America

Eugene R Jones