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:
Feb. 16, 1999
Filed:
Feb. 06, 1996
Lawrence Chee, Vancouver, CA;
Seiko Epson Corporation, Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
A system and method recaptures peripheral device dedicated memory for use by other system components such as the CPU. The system comprises a CPU, a preferred primary PCI bridge and at least one peripheral system. The peripheral system comprises a peripheral device, a peripheral memory typically dedicated to the peripheral device, and a peripheral controller for managing peripheral device commands and peripheral memory access requests. The system may further comprise a system memory unit having a system memory and a system memory controller. The preferred primary PCI bridge couples the CPU to the peripheral system(s), determines dedicated and shared memory portions for the peripheral memory, creates a composite memory map, and delivers memory aperture information to each of the peripherals. During runtime, the preferred primary PCI bridge manages dedicated and shared peripheral memory access. Using the memory aperture information, each peripheral controller manages access to its respective peripheral memory.