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:
Oct. 06, 1998
Filed:
Jun. 12, 1995
Soma Bhattacharjee, San Jose, CA (US);
Charles C Stearns, San Jose, CA (US);
S3, Incorporated, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
MPEG compressed video data is decompressed in a computer system by sharing computational decompression tasks between the computer system host microprocessor, the graphics accelerator, and a dedicated MPEG processor (video decoder engine) in order to make best use of resources in the computer system. Thus the dedicated MPEG processor is of minimum capability and hence advantageously minimum cost. The host microprocessor is used to decompress the MPEG upper data layers. The more powerful the host microprocessor, the more upper data layers it decompresses. The remainder of the decompression (lower data layers) is performed by the MPEG dedicated processor and/or the graphics accelerator. The video decoder engine is a fast hardwired processor. It has a graceful degradation capability to allow dropping of occasional video frames without displaying any part of a dropped video frame. The video decoder engine has a three stage pipeline structure to minimize circuitry and speed up operation.