Drawing system using design guides
Granted: April 23, 2002
Patent Number:
6377240
An electronic design guide, such as a french curve, can be placed in the geometry layer of a drawing program. This allows the design guide and a drawing tool, such as an electronic paint brush, to be moved about with in the drawing simultaneously using two different input control devices, such as a mouse and an electronic stylus/tablet. The design guide can then be used block or mask paint from being applied to the drawing by comparing the coordinates of the cursor with the area of the…
Method, system and computer program product for visually approximating scattered data using color to represent values of a categorical variable
Granted: April 16, 2002
Patent Number:
6373483
A method, system, and computer program product for a new data visualization tool for determining distribution weights that represent values of a categorical variable and then mapping a distinct color to each of the weights so as to visually represent the different values of the categorical variable (or data attribute) in a scatter plot. The distinct colors of a splat are based on the distribution of categorical variable values in a corresponding bin, the distribution of which is…
Multiple light source color balancing system within a liquid crystal flat panel display
Granted: April 2, 2002
Patent Number:
6366270
A system for color balancing within a liquid crystal flat panel display unit. The present invention includes a method and system for altering the brightness of two or more light sources, having differing color temperatures, thereby providing color balancing of a liquid crystal display (LCD) unit within a given color temperature range. The embodiments operate for both edge and backlighting systems. In an embodiment, two planar light pipes are positioned, a first over a second, with an air…
System and method for cooling electronic components
Granted: April 2, 2002
Patent Number:
6366461
A system and method for cooling individual electronic components utilizes individual manifolds to create individual flows of a negatively pressurized cooling fluid. This permits components with significantly different cooling loads to be located immediately adjacent each other on a circuit board, but without loss of space and computation time efficiencies, because cooling the components individually avoids heat generated by each component from adversely affecting the performance of the…
TIMING CONTROLLER HAVING DEPENDENCY MEMORY, SELECTION SERIALIZATION COMPONENT AND REORDERING COMPONENT FOR MAINTAINING TIME DEPENDENCIES IN CONVERSIONS BETWEEN SEQUENTIAL AND PARALLEL OPERATIONS USING STAGING MEMORY
Granted: March 26, 2002
Patent Number:
6363441
An electronic system and method that maintains time dependencies and ordering constraints in an electronic system. A timing controller utilizes a representative bit to track timing dependencies associated with information and ensures the information is communicated and processed in an order that preserves the timing dependencies as the information is converted from parallel to parallel or parallel to serial operations. The present invention tracks the order in which information is loaded…
Flat panel display screen with programmable gamma functionality
Granted: March 19, 2002
Patent Number:
6359389
A flat panel display having a programmable gamma without incidental loss in gray scale resolution. In one embodiment, the flat panel display is a liquid crystal display (LCD). The invention includes applying and adjusting a set of gamma controlling voltages to the DC reference circuit (a.k.a. ladder voltages) of an LCD module producing a change in the gamma response (or profile) of the LCD module without incidental loss of gray scale resolution. An adjustable ladder circuit (ALC) is…
Multisample dither method with exact reconstruction
Granted: March 19, 2002
Patent Number:
6359626
A method and apparatus for multisample dithering is provided. For the method of the present invention, a graphics pipeline generates a series of b-bit color sample values for each pixel that is to be processed. Each color sample is defined to include one or more omitted values. The omitted values allow the color sample values to have a range that exceeds the range that would normally be associated with the b-bits of each color sample value. The extended range of the color sample values…
Backface primitives culling
Granted: March 19, 2002
Patent Number:
6359629
A method of efficiently removing backfacing primitives from the graphics pipeline such that rendering efficiency is increased. In one embodiment of the present invention, a bounding cone of normal vectors of a primitive is first determined during pre-processing. During the rendering process, before the primitive is drawn, the bounding cone is compared with a half-space defined by a viewing vector. Primitives whose bounding cones do not intersect with the half-space will be removed from…
Computer generated paint stamp seaming compensation
Granted: March 12, 2002
Patent Number:
6356271
A system that applies computer generated paint stamps to a target polygon and to neighboring texture polygons in such a way that each texture polygon affected by a stamp that is too big for the target polygon and that is not connected to the target polygon in texture space receives an appropriately positioned and oriented stamp. The system determines the relative position and orientation of the stamp with respect to a texture polygon adjacent to the target polygon and applies the stamp…
Advanced firmware boot sequence x86 computer system that maintains legacy hardware and software compatibility
Granted: March 12, 2002
Patent Number:
6357003
An x86 based computer system that implements an advanced firmware based boot process without a conventional x86 BIOS. The computer system includes an x86 processor coupled to a volatile memory and a non-volatile memory via a bus, wherein the non-volatile memory includes an advanced firmware. The advanced firmware is executed by the processor to implement a boot sequence. During the boot sequence, the computer system initializes device drivers using the advanced firmware and interfaces…
Guaranteeing completion times for batch jobs without static partitioning
Granted: March 5, 2002
Patent Number:
6353844
A batch job scheduler facility schedules batch jobs in a general purpose multiprocessor system having resources, such as processors and memory, and running interactive and batch jobs. The resources are allocated to the batch jobs. Completion times are calculated and guaranteed for the batch jobs based on the resources allocated to the batch jobs. The completion times are calculated and guaranteed without static partitioning, resulting in improved utilization of system resources.…
Determining a worst case switching factor for integrated circuit design
Granted: March 5, 2002
Patent Number:
6353917
Determining a switching factor is useful for optimizing integrated circuit (IC) design. One aspect of the invention is a method for determining the switching factor. The method includes applying a voltage to each interconnect of a pair of interconnects, each voltage having a waveform and a slew time. The method includes dividing the voltage waveform into time regions, and analyzing a behavior of a capacitor in each of the time regions by determining the value of an effective capacitance…
Method and apparatus for interactively painting volumetric particle flow paths and controlling a flow of the flow paths
Granted: February 19, 2002
Patent Number:
6348924
A system that allows a user to interactively paint volumetric particles using a brush stroke. The particles are emitted from an area around the stroke path as the stroke is being made. As each stroke input event occurs, the system emits new particles from the new stroke segment and adds a segment to the particles that have already been emitted. This allows the user to interact with the particles as they are being “grown” and change a direction of a stroke thereby affecting…
Method and apparatus for partial-scan built-in self test logic
Granted: February 19, 2002
Patent Number:
6349398
An integrated circuit apparatus includes main logic for performing digital logic operations. The main logic is further comprised of a plurality of logic modules, each having at least one logic block associated with the logic module. Many times several logic blocks are associated with the logic modules. The main logic further also includes a number of input pins for receiving data and a number of output pins for outputting data from the main logic. Also included on the integrated circuit…
Conditioning and filling system for a spray evaporative cooling working fluid
Granted: February 12, 2002
Patent Number:
6345515
A conditioning and filling system includes a first processing section for degassing and dehydrating a working fluid, a second processing section for filtering the working fluid, and a monitoring section for sensing a condition of the working fluid, the monitoring section controlling a flow of the working fluid depending on the condition of the working fluid.
Video game system and coprocessor for video game system
Granted: January 29, 2002
Patent Number:
6342892
A low cost high performance three dimensional (3D) graphics system can model a world in three dimensions and project the model onto a two dimensional viewing plane selected based on a changeable viewpoint. The viewpoint can be changed on an interactive, real time basis by operating user input controls such as game controllers. The system rapidly produces a corresponding changing image (which can include animated cartoon characters or other animation for example) on the screen of a color…
Method and apparatus for handling invalidation requests to processors not present in a computer system
Granted: January 15, 2002
Patent Number:
6339812
A node controller (12) in a computer system (10) includes a processor interface unit (24), a memory directory interface unit (22), and a local block unit (28). In response to a memory location in a memory (17) associated with the memory directory interface unit (22) being altered, the processor interface unit (24) generates an invalidation request for transfer to the memory directory interface unit (22). The memory directory interface unit (22) provides the invalidation request and…
Method, system and computer program product for managing memory in a non-uniform memory access system
Granted: January 1, 2002
Patent Number:
6336177
A memory management and control system that is selectable at the application level by an application programmer is provided. The memory management and control system is based on the use of policy modules. Policy modules are used to specify and control different aspects of memory operations in NUMA computer systems, including how memory is managed for processes running in NUMA computer systems. Preferably, each policy module comprises a plurality of methods that are used to control a…
Method and apparatus for providing image and graphics processing using a graphics rendering engine
Granted: December 25, 2001
Patent Number:
6333743
A method an system provide that image processing operations and graphics processing are both performed by a graphics rendering system. The texture memory and a texture filter of the graphics rendering system are used to perform look-up table operations as well as multiply and accumulate operations typically associated with image processing.
Video game system with coprocessor providing high speed efficient 3D graphics and digital audio signal processing
Granted: December 18, 2001
Patent Number:
6331856
A low cost high performance three dimensional (3D) graphics system can model a world in three dimensions and project the model onto a two dimensional viewing plane selected based on a changeable viewpoint. The viewpoint can be changed on an interactive, real time basis by operating user input controls such as game controllers. The system rapidly produces a corresponding changing image (which can include animated cartoon characters or other animation for example) on the screen of a color…
