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:
Aug. 03, 1999
Filed:
Nov. 06, 1996
Kurt Barton Akeley, Mountain View, CA (US);
Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA (US);
Abstract
A system and method for managing multiple frame buffers. The system includes multiple frame buffers, and thus reduces the risk of dropped frames. The system controls and bounds render-to-display latency, and provides an application friendly and effective interface to the frame buffers. The system operates by estimating a latency of a frame that is yet to be rendered. The system determines whether the latency is greater than a target latency. If the latency is greater than the target latency, then the system blocks the application that is responsible for rendering the frame before rendering of the frame commences. As a result, render-to-display latency is bounded to the target latency. The system addresses the naming issue by providing the application with access to only the front buffer and the back buffer. In particular, the present system maintains a queue of one or more frame buffers. The newest frame buffer appended to the queue is considered to be the front buffer. The oldest frame buffer in the queue is displayed. A frame buffer not in the queue is considered to be the back buffer. Rendering is enabled to the back buffer. Once rendering to the back buffer is complete, the back buffer is appended to the queue and becomes the new front buffer.