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. 23, 1997
Filed:
Apr. 22, 1996
Kathleen Anne Duncan, Santa Cruz, CA (US);
Seagate Technology, Inc., Scotts Valley, CA (US);
Abstract
A modular ATA hard disc controller includes a small on-chip ATA sequencer microprocessor having on-chip dedicated hardware to manage real-time events without host CPU intervention, without substantially degrading cost/performance for the resultant controller chip. To conserve IC chip space, a small instruction set for the on-chip ATA sequencer microprocessor is provided, wherein branch instructions are avoided. The instruction set causes execution only for a given data transfer direction (read or write), or executes always. On-chip task registers are coupled directly to the ATA sequencer microprocessor. This architecture minimizes host CPU bottlenecking by decoupling the host CPU from real-time events occurring on the AT bus, and by decoupling the local processor from the task registers. The resultant controller automatically receipts for all write data, handles task file updating and intersector handshaking, and host microprocessor queueing of the address of the next disc data block to be transferred.