The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 24, 1996
Filed:
Feb. 27, 1996
Gary D Hicok, Mesa, AZ (US);
Eric A Hildebrandt, San Jose, CA (US);
Micheal H Zhu, San Jose, CA (US);
VLSI Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
A look ahead read buffer automatically senses the direction of the read sequence, sets the direction based on the current and previous read addresses, and prefetches data from memory to allow a Host device such as a CPU to read data out of the look ahead read buffer with no wait states, rather than accessing this data directly in slower memory that requires wait states. This read buffer is especially useful in applications such as display controllers that store and retrieve data in sequential format. The display memory may be partitioned into pages, and the read buffer will then determine and set the appropriate direction at page boundaries, and will not change direction within that page of display data. In addition, the read buffer inhibits reads that occur outside of the current page of display data, ignoring the effects of other reads that do not directly affect the display.