Method and apparatus for graphical data compression

• US 20070041635A1
• Filed: 08/18/2005
• Published: 02/22/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 08/18/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Valtrus Innovations Limited (f/k/a Dolya Holdco 9 Limited) (Key Patent Innovations Limited)
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Dykes, Don
• Granted Patent: US 7,817,849 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/166
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 9/004 Predictors, e.g. intraframe, interframe coding
• CPC Class Codes: H03M 7/30 Compression speech analysis-synthesis for redundancy reduction G10L19/00; for image communication H04N; Expansion; Suppression of unnecessary data, e.g. redundancy reduction

Abstract

A system comprising a first computer and a second computer remotely located from the first computer and in communication with the first computer via a network. The second computer comprises an encoder module which encodes and transmits a pixel color datum to the first computer. The encoder module encodes the pixel color datum by generating a bit indicative of the number of different pixel color data encoded since a datum having a same color as the pixel color datum was last encoded.

Claims

1. A system, comprising:

a first computer; and

a second computer remotely located from the first computer and in communication with the first computer via a network, said second computer comprising an encoder module;

wherein the encoder module encodes and transmits a pixel color datum to the first computer;

wherein the encoder module encodes the pixel color datum by generating a bit indicative of the number of different pixel color data encoded since a datum having a same color as the pixel color datum was last encoded.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the encoder module further encodes the pixel color datum by generating additional bits that indicate a number of times that a corresponding pixel color is to be repeated.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the first computer comprises a first display and the second computer comprises a second display, and wherein the first computer decodes the bit and uses the bit to generate on the first display an image displayed on the second display.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the encoder comprises an updateable cache and uses the cache to encode the pixel color datum.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the cache comprises at least one entry, said at least one entry comprising at least one field, wherein the at least one entry corresponds to a pixel color.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein said at least one field indicates an intensity level of red, an intensity level of green and an intensity level of blue used to generate the pixel color.

7. The system of claim 5, wherein said at least one field indicates whether the datum having the same color as the pixel color datum was last encoded within a predetermined number of previously encoded pixel data.

8. The system of claim 5, wherein said at least one field indicates when the datum having the same color as the pixel color datum was last encoded.

9. The system of claim 4, wherein the cache comprises a first entry and a second entry, said first entry corresponding to a first pixel color datum encoded more recently than a second pixel color datum corresponding to the second entry, wherein the first entry is of a higher priority level than the second entry.

10. The system of claim 4 further comprising a comparator coupled to the cache, said comparator adapted to compare a received pixel color datum to entries in the cache, wherein, if no entry matches the received pixel color datum, a new entry corresponding to the received pixel color datum is added to the cache.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein the encoder module transmits the bit to the encoder module in a bit stream, wherein a minimum width of the bit stream is 1 bit.

12. An apparatus, comprising:

an updateable cache;

a comparator module coupled to the updateable cache, said comparator module adapted to receive a pixel datum, to locate an entry in the cache corresponding to the pixel datum, and to retrieve entry data from said entry; and

a coder module coupled to the comparator module, said coder module adapted to encode said pixel datum using the entry data by generating a bit;

wherein the bit is indicative of the number of different pixel data encoded since a datum having a color corresponding to the pixel datum was last encoded.

13. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the entry data indicates intensity levels of red, green and blue used to generate the color corresponding to the pixel datum.

14. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the entry data indicates whether the datum having the color corresponding to the pixel datum has been encoded within a predetermined number of previously encoded pixel data.

15. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the entry data indicates the number of different pixel data encoded since the datum having the color corresponding to the pixel datum was last encoded.

16. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the apparatus outputs the bit via a bit stream, wherein a minimum width of the bit stream is 1 bit.

17. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the first computer comprises a first display and the second computer comprises a second display, and wherein the first computer decodes the bit and uses the bit to generate on the first display an image displayed on the second display.

18. A device, comprising:

an updateable cache comprising a plurality of entries, each entry corresponding to a different pixel color;

means for receiving a pixel datum and comparing said pixel datum to said plurality of entries to find a matching entry; and

means for encoding the received pixel datum by using entry data from the matching entry to generate a bit that is indicative of when a datum having a color corresponding to the pixel color datum was last encoded.

19. The device of claim 18, wherein the means for encoding is also for generating additional bits that indicate a number of times that a corresponding pixel color is to be repeated.

20. The device of claim 18, wherein the means for encoding is also for providing a variable bit stream having a minimum width of 1 bit.