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. 14, 2003
Filed:
Nov. 29, 2000
Rick Aulino, Ft Collins, CO (US);
Gregory M Hughes, Fort Collins, CO (US);
Roland M Hochmuth, Ft Collins, CO (US);
Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP., Houston, TX (US);
Abstract
A method for more efficient buffer control of the configuration of hardware devices. In representative embodiments of the method described in the present patent document, (1) a given configuration is permitted to span exclusive access to the hardware by other processes and (2) different configurations may share the same data buffer. Current configuration of the hardware device is maintained by always placing the current configuration at the beginning of the data buffer. This first entry, comprising the current configuration, is the header of the buffer's data. All subsequent instructions will follow this header, as will any subsequent modifications to the devices' configuration. Since instructions contained in the buffer are to be executed sequentially, the device will always be set to the correct configuration, even when exclusive access between different data sets of the buffer is lost. Because the header is written when a new data set is started and not when the data set is sent down to the device, the header will never be out of date with respect to the data that follows it.