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:
Apr. 13, 1999
Filed:
Jan. 23, 1997
Karl M Marks, Medford, MA (US);
Geoffrey A Dreher, Nashua, NH (US);
Frank P Monaco, Burlington, MA (US);
Craig C Cook, Wayland, MA (US);
Xionics Document Technologies, Inc., Burlington, MA (US);
Abstract
Embodiments of the present invention are directed to a microcontroller system incorporating a DMA system and to a method of accessing a memory by a plurality of processing units. In embodiments of the present invention, the microcontroller system includes a plurality of processing units, a DMA module, and an interface to an external memory system. The DMA module controls access to the external memory system by the processing units on a time shared basis by allocating time slots to each of the plurality of processing units. The processing units can access the external memory system during their assigned time slots. Data transfers to and from the memory are accomplished in packets having a fixed maximum size.