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:
Nov. 25, 1997
Filed:
Sep. 11, 1995
Dale E Gulick, Austin, TX (US);
Andy Lambrecht, Austin, TX (US);
Mike Webb, Austin, TX (US);
Larry Hewitt, Austin, TX (US);
Brian Barnes, Round Rock, TX (US);
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Abstract
The present invention comprises a computer system and method optimized for real-time applications which provides increased performance over current computer architectures. The system includes a dedicated multimedia engine and dedicated multimedia memory coupled directly to the main memory. The computer system includes a data path to the main memory and the multimedia memory, and includes a separate command path to the multimedia engine. In one embodiment, the CPU includes a separate command path through the chipset logic to the multimedia engine. In an alternate embodiment, the CPU includes a separate command path to the multimedia engine through the PCI bus. In this alternate embodiment, the multimedia engine includes a PCI interface which couples to the PCI bus. The multimedia engine executes commands and data from the multimedia memory to perform a number of real-time operations, including audio and video functions, as well as others. Thus the computer system of the present invention provides greater performance for real-time applications than prior systems.