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:
Mar. 27, 2001
Filed:
Apr. 04, 1997
George H. J. Shaw, Woodinville, WA (US);
Bryan A. Woodruff, North Bend, WA (US);
Thomas J. O'Rourke, Oulu, FI;
Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA (US);
Abstract
A method and computer program product for overcoming the inefficiencies associated with inter-buffer data transfers between separate processing components such as kernel mode drivers that are chained together. Provided is a standard mechanism for allocating and managing data buffers needed for processing data in a system, wherein multiple drivers are chained together using a standardized connection method in the connection pin instances. Drivers having different buffer requirements and capabilities may be queried and matched for easy data transition between the chained drivers requiring the least number of buffers and, hence the least expensive yet most efficient inter-buffer data transfer. Examples of buffer requirements include previous frame storage for adaptive processing, byte alignment, frame size, outstanding frames allowed, etc. The buffer requirements of an input connection pin instance may be queried by an application initializing the chained drivers. When a buffer is needed, a buffer allocator will be associated with the input pin instance, otherwise a driver will process the data in the previous existing buffer.