Patent · US Expired

System and method for establishing priorities in transferring data in burst counts from a memory to a plurality of FIFO stages, each having a low, intermediate, and high region

US5983315A · kind A · utility

7Cited by
6References
21Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateApr 25, 1997
Grant dateNov 9, 1999
Priority date
Expiry dateApr 25, 2017

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06F13/28
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

Each of a plurality of FIFO has (1) a low region indicating a minimum number of words for FIFO storage, (2) a burst count indicating the number of words involved in each transfer to such FIFO and (3) a high region where a word count transfer into the FIFO is not initiated. However, a burst count transfer initiated before the beginning of a FIFO high region may be completed in the FIFO high region. Each FIFO is initially filled from a memory by a memory controller to the low FIFO region. Upon word transfer from each FIFO, the memory controller establishes a priority to provide an additional burst count to the FIFO low region. When the memory controller is otherwise idle and the number of words in such FIFO is in a region intermediate the FIFO low and high regions, a burst count for each FIFO may be transferred into the intermediate FIFO region. The memory controller and each FIFO respectively remember the number of words transferred into and from such FIFO. The difference between the number of words transferred into and from each FIFO indicates whether the words in such FIFO are in the low, intermediate or high region. The individual value of the number of words for each FIFO low re…

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.