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AssigneeNintendo Co., Ltd.
InventorsJeremy E. San, Ben Cheese, Carl N. Graham, Peter R. Warnes
Estimating the term…
A fully programmable, graphics microprocessor is disclosed which is designed to be embodied in a removable external memory unit for connection with a host information processing system. In an exemplary embodiment, a video game system is described including a host video game system and a pluggable video game cartridge housing the graphics microprocessor. The game cartridge also includes a read-only program memory (ROM) and a random-access memory (RAM). The graphics coprocessor operates in conjunction with a three bus architecture embodied on the game cartridge. The graphics processor using this bus architecture may execute programs from either the program ROM, external RAM or its own internal cache RAM. The fully user programmable graphics coprocessor has an instruction set which is designed to efficiently implement arithmetic operations associated with 3-D graphics and, for example, includes special instructions executed by dedicated hardware for plotting individual pixels in the host video game system's character mapped display which, from the programmer's point of view, creates a “virtual” bit map by permitting the addressing of individual pixels—even though the host system is character based. The graphics coprocessor interacts with the host coprocessor such that the graphics coprocessor's 16 general registers are accessible to the host processor at all times.
For use in a video game apparatus having a processing system including a main processing unit and picture processing circuitry for displaying images on a display screen, and user control keys for a user to provide control signals to said processing system, said video game apparatus including a port for receiving a removable device for providing enhanced functionality to said video game apparatus, said removable device comprising:
For use in a video game apparatus having a processing system including a main processing unit and picture processing circuitry for displaying images on a display screen, a video RAM for storing display related information and user control keys for a user to provide control signals to said processing system, said video game apparatus including a port for receiving a removable device for providing enhanced functionality to said video game apparatus, said removable device comprising:
For use in an information processing apparatus having a processing system including a main processing unit and picture processing circuitry for displaying images on a display screen, a video RAM for storing display related information and user control keys for a user to provide control signals to said processing system, said information processing apparatus including a port for receiving a removable device for providing enhanced functionality to said information processing apparatus, said removable device comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.