Multimedia arbiter and method using fixed round-robin slots for real-time agents and a timed priority slot for non-real-time agents
US6205524A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventor
Key dates
| Filing date | Sep 16, 1998 |
| Grant date | Mar 20, 2001 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Sep 16, 2018 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F13/364
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A cascaded multimedia arbiter and method for arbitrating access to a shared multimedia memory, which is used to store multiple frame buffers for multiple monitors. Other buffers for multimedia agents such as for audio, camera input, digital-versatile disk (DVD) input, and three dimensional (3D) rendering share the same memory. The shared memory allows flexible memory allocation as graphics, audio, and multimedia modes change. Many real-time agents such as for graphics and audio read the memory to fill first-in-first-out (FIFO) buffers. These real-time agents are assigned a fixed slot in a round-robin arbitration. The last or final arbitration slot is used by all non-real-time agents, such as the host, 3D engine, and DVD playback. These non-real-time agents can wait, but need the most bandwidth to maximize performance. The last time slot uses a priority arbiter to grant access in a priority order to the non-real-time agents. A timer is used to limit the time that the last arbitration slot services non-real-time agents. When the timer signals a non-real-time time-out, non-real-time agents' memory accesses are terminated. The next arbitration loop then begins with the first real-time …
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.