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:
May. 16, 2000
Filed:
Apr. 28, 1998
John L Furlani, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Alexandra R Ohlson, Palo Alto, CA (US);
David T Berry, Impington, GB;
Sun Microsystems, Inc., Mountain View, CA (US);
Abstract
Apparatus, methods, and computer program products are disclosed for reducing the overhead associated with performing area-image operations on a tiled image. The invention detects when an area-image operation, that uses a source pixel contribution map, requires pixel values from one or more adjacent tiles. The invention also generates a list of boxes that represent pixel image information. These boxes are split with respect to the image edges and the tile edges within the image. The split boxes are used to direct memory buffer allocation for cobbled portions of the image and to leave the majority of the tile's pixel information to be operated on within memory buffer holding the tile. Thus, the invention provides a mechanism to assemble image data that crosses tile edges without copying major portions of the tile from one memory buffer to another. Additionally, each resulting box represents sufficient pixel values such that existing image processing techniques currently are applied to area-image operations can also be applied to tiled images. Thus, box can be processed by an MMX-like instruction or image hardware accelerator.