Network hardware graphics adapter compression

• US 8,441,493 B2
• Filed: 02/14/2012
• Issued: 05/14/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 04/14/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Audie C. Berry, Trust Hilary Max Michael
• Original Assignee: Audie C. Berry, Trust Hilary Max Michael
• Inventors: McGowan, Scott James
• Primary Examiner(s): Richer, Joni
• Application Number:
  US13/396,527
• Publication Number:
  US 20120229484A1
• Time in Patent Office: 455 Days
• Field of Search: 345/501, 345/519, 345/530, 345/531, 345/534, 345/536, 345/545, 345/558, 345/559, 345/565, 709/217, 709/218, 725/105, 725/109, 725/118
• US Class Current: 345/534
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/14 Digital output to display device ; Cooperation and interconnection of the display device with other functional units
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 2340/02 Handling of images in compressed format, e.g. JPEG, MPEG
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 2360/18 Use of a frame buffer in a display terminal, inclusive of the display panel
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 2370/025 LAN communication management
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 5/006 Details of the interface to the display terminal specific for a display terminal using a CRT G09G1/167; using a flat panel G09G3/2096; circuits for interfacing with colour displays G09G5/04
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 5/008 Clock recovery

Abstract

Systems and methods of compressing and displaying the contents of multiple display devices on a single display device are presented. The display content from each of a plurality of devices is contemporaneously displayed by placing each respective desktop display raster data into video memory in a sequential order for each of the plurality of monitors and setting the scan engine to scan a single, very wide, image having a horizontal value equal to the sum of the widths of the individual displays and a vertical value equal to the original height of the individual display.

Claims

1. A video compression method, comprising:

serially reading from a primary frame buffer raster data indicative of a first image at a temporal frame refresh rate and temporal refresh phase lock while contemporaneously writing to a slave frame buffer in alternating memory blocks on consecutive write operations raster data indicative of a second image, the serial reading and writing are temporally phase locked and the refresh rate synchronized with the primary frame buffer raster data temporal frame refresh rate and temporal refresh phase lock;

reading opposite alternating slave buffer memory blocks as a pixel data flow and comparing, on a per pixel basis, the pixel data flow with a pixel data stream read from the primary frame buffer;

detecting differences between the raster data indicative of the first image and the raster data indicative of the second image while reading the raster data indicative of the first image from the primary frame buffer and writing the raster data indicative of the second image to the slave frame buffer;

the differences detected using at least one scan engine communicably coupled to the primary frame buffer and the slave frame buffer;

the differences detected on a per pixel basis at the temporal frame refresh rate and temporal refresh phase lock;

generating by the at least one scan engine at least one signal including data indicative of the determined pixel differences between the raster data indicative of the first image and the raster data indicative of the second image; and

generating a display output on a remote raster display device, the display output generated using the data indicative of a first image serially read from the primary frame buffer raster.

2. The video compression method of claim 1 wherein the generating by the at least one scan engine at least one signal occurs in real time.

3. The video compression method of claim 1 wherein serially reading the first image includes at least one first frame group and the at least one first frame group includes a plurality of first frames;

and wherein contemporaneously writing the second image includes at least one second frame group and the at least one second frame group includes a plurality of second frames.

4. The video compression method of claim 1 wherein serially reading from a primary frame buffer raster data indicative of a first image at a temporal frame refresh rate and temporal refresh phase lock while contemporaneously writing to a slave frame buffer raster data indicative of a second image, the serial reading and writing temporally phase locked and refresh rate synchronized with the primary frame buffer raster data temporal frame refresh rate and temporal refresh phase lock, includes:

serially reading from a primary frame buffer at a temporal first frame refresh rate data indicative of a first image while contemporaneously writing to a temporally phase locked slave frame buffer frame buffer raster data indicative of a second image, synchronized and phase locked at the temporal frame refresh rate to a sub-pixel period accuracy;

wherein the writing to the slave buffer is delayed with respect to the read from the primary frame buffer of a number of pixels counts.

5. A video compression method, comprising:

serially reading from a primary frame buffer raster data indicative of a first image at a frame refresh rate while contemporaneously writing to a slave frame buffer in alternating memory blocks on consecutive write operations raster data indicative of a second image, the serial reading and writing are temporally phase locked and the refresh rate is synchronized with the primary frame buffer raster data frame refresh rate;

reading opposite alternating slave buffer memory blocks as a pixel data flow and comparing, on per pixel basis, the pixel data flow with the pixel data stream read from the primary frame buffer;

detecting differences between the raster data indicative of the first image and the raster data indicative of the second image while reading the raster data indicative of the first image from the primary frame buffer and writing the raster data indicative of the second image to the slave frame buffer, the detecting performed on a per pixel basis at the frame refresh rate using at least one scan engine coupled to the primary frame rate buffer and the slave frame buffer;

generating by the at least one scan engine at least one signal that includes data indicative of the determined pixel differences between the raster data indicative of the first image and the raster data indicative of the second image; and

generating a display output on a remote raster display device using the data indicative of a first image serially read from the primary frame buffer raster.

6. The video compression method of claim 5, wherein the frame refresh rate includes a temporal frame refresh rate.

7. The video compression method of claim 5, wherein the frame refresh rate includes a temporal refresh phase lock.

8. The video compression method of claim 5, wherein the frame refresh rate includes a temporal frame refresh rate and a temporal refresh phase lock.