Methods and apparatus for providing a compressed network in a multi-processing system
AssigneeSony Computer Entertainment Inc.
InventorsKeisuke Inoue, Eiji Iwata
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The present invention provides methods and apparatus for transferring and storing data among processors and memory in a multiprocessor system. The data is compressed locally before it is sent to a shared memory. The memory stores the data in its compressed state, but the data is aligned in the memory in the same manner as uncompressed data would be. A tag table keeps track of the compression type and compressed data size for a set of data at a given address block. A data compressor and a data expander may be implemented in a direct memory access controller accessible to multiple coprocessors, or the compressor and the expander may be implemented within the coprocessors.
Claims48
An apparatus for processing data, comprising:
- a plurality of processors operable to process the data;
- a data compressor operable to perform compression of the data;
- a data expander operable to perform decompression of the data;
- and
- a memory access unit configured to transfer the data compressed by the data compressor between a selected one of the processors and a shared memory, and to manage compression information associated with the data that is compressed.
A processing system, comprising:
- a processor configured to process data;
- and
- a memory access unit configured to transfer the data between the processor and a shared memory, and to manage compression information associated with the data that is compressed, the memory access unit including a data compressor and a data expander, the data compressor being configured to perform compression of the data and the data expander being configured to perform decompression of the data.
A processing system, comprising:
- a processing element including a bus, a processing unit, and a plurality of sub-processing units connected to the processing unit by the bus;
- and
- a memory access unit;
- wherein a selected one of the sub-processing units is configured to transfer and store compressed data in a memory using the memory access unit, and compression information associated with the compressed data is stored by the processing system.
A computer processing system, comprising:
- a user input device;
- a display interface for attachment of a display device;
- a processor comprising one or more processing elements;
- a memory access unit coupling the processor to a memory, the memory access unit being configured to transfer and store compressed data in the memory, and to retrieve the compressed data from the memory;
- and
- a tag table for storing compression information associated with the compressed data.
A computer network, comprising:
- a plurality of computer processing systems connected to one another via a communications network, each of the computer processing systems comprising:
- a user input device;
- a display interface for attachment of a display device;
- a processor comprising one or more processing elements;
- a memory access unit coupling the processor to a memory, the memory access unit being configured to transfer and store compressed data in the memory, and to retrieve the compressed data from the memory;
- and
- a tag table for storing compression information associated with the compressed data.
A data processing method, comprising:
- compressing data to generate compressed data;
- identifying compression information associated with the compressed data;
- managing the compression information with a memory access unit;
- and
- transferring the compressed data from a selected one of a plurality of processors to a shared memory using the memory access unit, the shared memory being accessible to the plurality of processors.
A storage medium storing a program for use in a processing system including a processor and a memory access unit, the program causing at least one of the processor and the memory access unit to:
- compress data to generate compressed data;
- identify compression information associated with the compressed data;
- manage the compression information using the memory access unit;
- and
- transfer the compressed data from the processor to memory using the memory access unit.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.