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:
Oct. 23, 2001
Filed:
Jul. 13, 1995
Steven Marshall Hancock, Boca Raton, FL (US);
Mark A. Pietras, Boca Raton, FL (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A method of and apparatus for performing blitter operations is performed in two parts. First, a description of the to-be-performed data transfer is analyzed and a computer instruction sequence is generated therefrom. The instruction sequence may include the appropriate instructions to implement scaling, clipping, and color conversion of a source image, as implicated by the blitter description. Second, the computer instruction sequence is executed an appropriate number of times, again depending upon the blitter description. One of the described embodiments transforms a blitter description that describes a target image in terms of visible rectangles into a description that describes the target image as having at least one line-type, in which the line-type comprises at least one pixel run, characterized by visible and non-visible states. The line-type description is then utilized by a code-generating logic to generate the appropriate instructions. The apparatus for performing the blitter operations may be implemented as an interface library, thus allowing client programs, including interactive games, to use the advantages of the invention to perform rapid screen updates.