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:
Sep. 23, 1997
Filed:
Jun. 08, 1995
Bryan G Prouty, Wellington, CO (US);
Eric M Rentschler, Fort Collins, CO (US);
Hewlett-Packard Company, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
An apparatus and method for transferring data between first and second circuit blocks of a computer graphics system are provided. The first and second circuit blocks are interconnected by a data bus having n bits. The apparatus includes a circuit in the first circuit block for sequentially transmitting data words from the first circuit block to a second circuit block on the data bus. The data words include one or more long data words having more than n bits. The apparatus further includes a register in the first circuit block for storing bits of the long data words in excess of n bits, and a controller in the first circuit block for loading the bits of the long data words in excess of n bits into the register and for combining the bits of the long data words stored in the register into a composite data word for transmission to the second circuit block. The composite data word may include a short data word having less than n bits. In a preferred embodiment, Z coordinate data words having 40 bits are transmitted with an 8 bit command word over a 32 bit data bus without extra bus cycles.