FIFO overflow management
AssigneeCanon Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorKok Tjoan Lie
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Disclosed is method and apparatus (20) for improving the performance of a pipeline system in which a FIFO (24) is incorporated in the pipeline between an upstream processing module (22) and a downstream processing module (26), each of the modules (22, 26) having access to a common external memory (32), this being typical in many ASIC arrangements. The method commences with detecting when the FIFO (24) is substantially full and transferring commands from the upstream module (22) to the external memory (32). Commands received by the downstream module (26) from each of the FIFO (24) and the external memory (32) are interpreted to determine a source of following ones of the commands.
Claims11
A method of improving the performance of a pipeline system in which a FIFO is incorporated in said pipeline between an upstream processing module and a downstream processing module, each of said modules having access to a common external memory, said method being characterised by:
- detecting when said FIFO is substantially full and transferring commands from said upstream module to said external memory;
- and
- interpreting commands from each of said FIFO and said external memory to said downstream module to determine a source of following ones of said commands.
A pipelined processor system comprising:
- an upstream processor module;
- a downstream processor module;
- a FIFO arrangement coupling an output of said upstream module to an input of said downstream module to thus form a processor pipeline;
- a memory module accessible by each of said processor modules;
- and
- an overload arrangement by which a filling of said FIFO arrangement is detected and said output of said upstream module is directed for intermediate storage in said memory module and by which said downstream module can interpret commands received from each of said FIFO arrangement and said memory module to determine a source of subsequent commands.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.