Did You Know...
...that the video game, Pong, was invented by a guy who graduated at the bottom of his engineering class? Nolan Bushnell spent more time running the games at a local amusement park than he did on his studies at the University of Utah. His dreams of working for Disney's amusement empire were dashed when the company wouldn't hire him. Taking a boring job, Nolan daydreamed about electronic versions of popular games. He invented Pong, the first video game, and went on to found Atari Co.
PatentStorm News
Make the Most of Our Site
See this month's Top Inventors and Most Cited Patents.
Stay on top of the latest innovations by subscribing to an RSS feed.
Registered users: Manage your profile.
| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 7464277 | Microprocessor performance mode control utilizing sensed temperature as an indication of microprocessor utilization Methods and systems are disclosed for controlling microprocessor (CPU) performance modes utilizing sensed temperatures as an indication of CPU utilization. By recognizing that temperature can be used as an indication of CPU utilization, higher performance modes can ... | 12/09/2008 |
| 7464283 | System and method for producing precision timing signals by controlling register banks to provide a phase difference between two signal paths Systems and methods are provided for providing precision timing signals. A first register bank, driven by a first clock signal, provides a first delay along a first signal path. A second register bank, driven by a second clock signal related to the first clock signa... | 12/09/2008 |
| 7464259 | Microprocessor boot-up controller, nonvolatile memory controller, and information processing system A processor boot-up controller includes: a volatile memory connected to a nonvolatile memory; a selector, which transfers boot-up codes to the volatile memory from the nonvolatile memory; a controller for the nonvolatile memory configured from a boot-up control sequ... | 12/09/2008 |
| 7464279 | Pre-activation of network devices An approach for pre-activating network devices includes using prior usage of a network device to estimate times when the network device will be used in the future. The network device is then pre-activated, i.e., transitioned to an active operational state, prior to ... | 12/09/2008 |
| 7464384 | Method for inter-object communication A method for managing inter-object communication is provided. With the method, objects obtain licenses to interact with one another via a licensing framework. When an object wishes to enter into an interaction with another object, the first object sends its license ... | 12/09/2008 |
| 7464285 | Controlling an accumulation of timing errors in a synchronous system Apparatus (100) for communicating clock correction data between two or more clocked entities (102, 104) using a standardized clock correction unit or quanta. A source-native pre-scaler (302) can convert source-native clock correction values to s... | 12/09/2008 |
| 7464284 | Systems and methods for driving data over a bus where the systems employ a bus clock that is derived from a system clock and a data clock designed to lead the bus clock Systems and methods for driving data over a data bus are disclosed. One embodiment of a system may comprise a bus clock signal that is a copy of a system clock signal that controls the timing associated with transferring data over the bus, a data clock signal that i... | 12/09/2008 |
| 7464287 | Strategy to verify asynchronous links across chips Various embodiments of the invention provide a frequency shifter to vary the frequency of data transmitted over time, such as to increase and decrease the frequency of test data transmitted over time to verify a digital communication device's ability to receive data... | 12/09/2008 |
| 7464256 | Bios protection device preventing execution of a boot program stored in the bios memory until the boot program is authenticated A processing system including a bios protection device and method of protecting a bios is provided. The system comprises a central processor (11), and a BIOS memory device (18) to which the BIOS protection device (17) is interconnected by addres... | 12/09/2008 |
| 7460277 | System and method for halftoning using a time-variable halftone pattern Successive frames or images of an input image that are presented to the output device are individually halftoned. A starting location within the input image for tiling one of one or more halftone techniques over the frame or image is determined. The starting locatio... | 12/02/2008 |
| 7461244 | Method and apparatus to support booting despite deficient resources A method and related apparatuses support booting despite deficient system resources. In one embodiment, a processing system includes two or more devices in a peripheral connect interface (PCI) subsystem, as well as instructions encoded in a machine accessible medium... | 12/02/2008 |
| 7461280 | Recall circuit for quitting a power saving mode A recall circuit for quitting a power saving mode is disclosed, which is applicable to a television functioning as the display screen of a computer, which mainly uses a microprocessor to turn on the power of all chips in the television, monitors the communication vi... | 12/02/2008 |
| 7456997 | Color management A means of encapsulating the effects of global and or selective color changes into a multidimensional LUT designed to carryout a specific color space transformation to an image is described. ... | 11/25/2008 |
| 7457004 | Halftone dot formation method, halftone dot formation apparatus, threshold matrix generation method used therefor and halftone dot recording medium Halftone cells each serving as a unit for formation of a dot are arranged in irregular shapes at random and divided into two groups. The halftone cells (720) in the first group are fewer than the halftone cells (730) in the second group and dispersed, ... | 11/25/2008 |
| 7457979 | Synchronous follow-up apparatus and synchronous follow-up method A synchronous follow-up apparatus includes a PLL portion that outputs a first clock signal, and a control loop portion. The control loop portion includes a reference frequency signal generating portion that outputs a reference frequency signal, a clock signal genera... | 11/25/2008 |
| 7457971 | Monitoring and controlling power consumption in a sequential logic circuit The present invention relates to an electronic circuit, apparatus and method for monitoring and controlling power consumption. Accordingly, there is provided an electronic circuit, apparatus and method that includes one or more sequential logic elements (12) ... | 11/25/2008 |
| 7457978 | Adjustable byte lane offset for memory module to reduce skew Disclosed herein are solutions for addressing the problem of skew of data within a byte lane by factors caused external to the integrated circuit or module providing the data. To compensate for such skew, an on-chip delay is added to the data out paths of those bits... | 11/25/2008 |
| 7457977 | Synchronization of firmware signal updates to regular clock frequency The present invention provides a method and apparatus for improving the synchronization of timing signals in a system where firmware is being employed. In particular, the present invention enables the firmware to generate signals with a timing that is required by a ... | 11/25/2008 |
| 7457973 | System and method for prioritizing data transmission and transmitting scheduled wake-up times to network stations based on downlink transmission duration A new system and method is described, utilizing a scheduler based on a transmission time calculation and prioritizing algorithm. The system utilizes a Schedule Information Vector (SIV) protocol for saving power in wireless local area networks. The system comprises a... | 11/25/2008 |
| 7457976 | Power management using spare capacity of redundant power supply in blade environment A method and system are disclosed to enable and control over-subscription in a blade/chassis system and to provide the capability to recover in the event of the loss of a redundant power supply. An over-subscription policy is determined by a system administrator and... | 11/25/2008 |
| 7457970 | VLIW processor with power saving A data processing apparatus has an instruction memory system arranged to output an instruction word, capable of containing a plurality of instructions, respective instruction words being output in response to respective instruction addresses. An instruction executio... | 11/25/2008 |
| 7457001 | Half-toner compositor for use in a print engine/controller A half-toner compositor to composite image plane data, for use in an ink drop print head, the half-toner compositor comprising at least one dot merger 58 receiving data from more than one buffer 42, and a color mask register 48 holding masking b... | 11/25/2008 |
| 7458078 | Apparatus and method for autonomic hardware assisted thread stack tracking Method and apparatus for tracking thread stacks during a trace of a computer program. Hardware assistance mechanisms allow a processor to autonomically maintain a thread work area for each thread where a call stack is stored. An operating system informs the processo... | 11/25/2008 |
| 7454649 | Marginless status determination circuit By including a unit for storing data to be determined, a unit for delaying the data, a unit for storing the output of the delay unit, and a unit for comparing the storage contents of the data before the delay with the storage contents of the data after the delay, an... | 11/18/2008 |
| 7454756 | Method, apparatus and system for seamlessly sharing devices amongst virtual machines A method, apparatus and system are described for seamlessly sharing I/O devices amongst multiple virtual machines (“VMs”) on a host computer. Specifically, according to one embodiment of the invention, the virtual machine manager (“VMM”) on the host cycles a... | 11/18/2008 |
| 7454608 | Resource configuration in multi-modal distributed computing systems A method and system for configuring available resources in real-time to automatically accommodate the needs of the system user in multi-modal distributed computing system is disclosed. Information about the location or environment of a wireless device is used, prefe... | 11/18/2008 |
| 7454607 | Techniques for managing applications in a portable communication device An arbitration engine manages applications in a portable communication device by identifying a comprehensive DSP image that includes all modules necessary to run a new application as well as currently active applications. The arbitration engine also includes a confl... | 11/18/2008 |
| 7454749 | Scalable parallel processing on shared memory computers A virtual parallel computer is created within a programming environment comprising both shared memory and distributed memory architectures. At run time, the virtual architecture is mapped to a physical hardware architecture. In this manner, a massively parallel comp... | 11/18/2008 |
| 7454753 | Semaphore management subsystem for use with multi-thread processor systems A generic method and apparatus for managing semaphores in a multi-threaded processing system has a storage area for each of the threads in the processing system. Each storage area includes a first part for storing at least one indicia for identifying at least one un... | 11/18/2008 |
| 7450272 | Method and system for printing management A method and a system for printing management, with the intension of appropriate color management performed in a newspaper print site in which a number of newspaper rotary presses of two or more types are provided, obtain image data representing each page edited in ... | 11/11/2008 |
| 7451335 | Selectively disabling a portion of ASF operations when ASF device is powered by auxiliary power Techniques are disclosed for providing system manageability for computing systems operating under OS-absent conditions. In particular, techniques are disclosed for providing fully functional system management capabilities even when the primary power source for the c... | 11/11/2008 |
| 7450271 | System and method for optimizing image output quality The present invention is directed to a system and method for parameter based visual characteristic control. The system includes input means adapted for receiving image data representative of at least one visual characteristic of an associated image. The system furth... | 11/11/2008 |
| 7450270 | Image data processing methods, hard imaging devices, and articles of manufacture Image data processing methods, hard imaging devices, and articles of manufacture are described. According to one embodiment, an image data processing method includes accessing image data of an image and comprising a plurality of pixels, defining a plurality of subse... | 11/11/2008 |
| 7450252 | Method and device for processing image data A method of processing image data including the steps of receiving a printer language data, obtaining a bitmap data by developing the printer language data, obtaining a BM compressed data by compressing the bitmap data, comparing volumes of the printer language data... | 11/11/2008 |
| 7451491 | Method and a device for allowing only a specific kind of hardware to correctly execute software A method of limiting the use of software determines, before the software is executed on hardware, whether or not the hardware has a specific configuration inherent in a specific kind of hardware. If it is determined that the hardware has the specific configuration, ... | 11/11/2008 |
| 7451457 | Facilitating interaction between video renderers and graphics device drivers Facilitating interaction may be enabled through communication protocols and/or APIs that permit information regarding image processing capabilities of associated graphics hardware to be exchanged between graphics device drivers and video renders. In a first exemplar... | 11/11/2008 |
| 7451446 | Task supervision The invention relates to a method for supervising a task-based data processing, wherein for a plurality of tasks the following steps are performed for each task: scheduling the task for processing, and logging the scheduling of the task by storing a task identifier ... | 11/11/2008 |
| 7451339 | Pulse-per-second attachment for STP A time synchronization apparatus, method and system are provided. In one aspect, the apparatus comprises at least a time of day clock, a first port operable to receive at least first time information using a first time protocol, a second port operable to receive at ... | 11/11/2008 |
| 7451332 | Methods and apparatuses for controlling the temperature of a data processing system Methods and apparatuses to manage working states of a data processing system. At least one embodiment of the present invention includes a data processing system with one or more sensors (e.g., physical sensors such as tachometer and thermistors, and logical sensors ... | 11/11/2008 |
| 7451330 | Portable appliance, power saving method and sound volume compensating method, and storage medium There are provided a mobile device that is equipped with a musical composition-reproducing section and capable of curtailing the battery drain as much as possible, and a mobile device that prevents the quality of reproduced musical tones from being degraded even if ... | 11/11/2008 |
