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. 26, 2002
Filed:
Oct. 01, 1999
Gilbert Laurenti, Saint Paul de Vence, FR;
Karim Djafarian, Vence, FR;
Herve Catan, Saint Laurent du Var, FR;
Texas Instruments Incorporated, Dallas, TX (US);
Abstract
Data processing apparatus supporting circular buffers CB includes address storage ARx for holding a virtual buffer index and offset storage BOFxx for holding an offset address. Circular buffer management logic is configured to be operable to apply a modifier to a virtual buffer index held in the address storage to derive a modified virtual buffer index and to apply a buffer offset held in the offset storage to the modified virtual buffer index to derive a physical address for addressing a circular buffer. By employing virtual addressing to a buffer index for a circular buffer management, it is possible to make efficient use of memory resources. One or more circular buffers can be located contiguously with respect to each other and/or other data in memory, avoiding fragmentation of the memory. The buffer index forms a pointer for the circular buffer. The apparatus enables circular buffers to be implemented without alignment constraints, while maintaining compatibility with prior circular buffer implementations with alignment constraints.