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. 31, 1996
Filed:
Jun. 07, 1995
Michael G Smith, Tustin, CA (US);
AST Research, Inc., Irvine, CA (US);
Abstract
A distributed direct memory access (DMA) system includes specially configured hardware connections between at least one slave DMA controller and a central, or master, DMA controller. The specially configured hardware connections allow the slave DMA controllers to request channel configuration information from the central DMA controller when peripheral devices under the control of the slave DMA controllers make a DMA request. After the channel information is transferred from the master DMA controller to the slave DMA controller, the slave DMA controller is able to process DMA requests for the peripheral devices under its control. In one particular embodiment, the master DMA controller is located in a notebook computer and the slave DMA controller is located in a docking station. The master DMA controller and slave DMA controller communicate when the notebook computer is engaged with the docking station.