Method and system for speculative decompression of compressed image data in an image capture unit

A method for accelerating a user interface on a display of an image capture unit, the image capture unit including a plurality of image files for providing a plurality of images, the method comprising the steps of:

• selecting an image based upon a manual scrolling method which advances the selected image based upon a repeated user action;
• providing a predetermined number of speculation buffers;
• organizing the predetermined number of speculation buffers based upon the selected image by;
• assigning the predetermined number of speculation buffers such that the selected image is decompressed in a first speculation buffer;
• and
• ordering the remaining speculation buffers such that the images that are neighboring the selected image are stored in the remaining speculation buffers dependent upon a user interaction.

A method for accelerating a user interface on a display of an image capture unit, the image capture unit including a plurality of image files for providing a plurality of images, the image capture unit operating in a plurality of modes;

• the image capture unit including a plurality of input buffers which are utilized in one of the plurality of modes and are unutilized on at least one of the other of the plurality of modes;
• the method comprising the steps of:
• reallocating the input buffers as speculation buffers by:
• assigning the predetermined number of speculation buffers such that the selected image is decompressed in a first speculation buffer;
• and
• ordering the remaining speculation buffers such that the images that are neighboring the selected image are stored in the remaining speculation buffers dependent upon a user interaction;
• and
• providing image data from the image files to the speculation buffers when the image capture unit is in the at least one of the plurality of modes.

A system for accelerating a user interface on a display of an image capture unit, the image capture unit including a plurality of image files for providing a plurality of images, the system comprising:

• means for selecting an image by an automatic scrolling method which advances the selected image at a preset rate;
• means for providing a predetermined number of speculation buffers;
• means for organizing the predetermined number of speculation buffers based upon the selected image;
• means for assigning the predetermined number of speculation buffers such that the selected image is decompressed in a first speculation buffer;
• and
• means for ordering the remaining speculation buffers such that the images that are in sequential order from the selected image are stored in the remaining speculation buffer dependent upon a user interaction.

A system for accelerating a user interface on a display of an image capture unit, the image capture unit including a plurality of image files for providing a plurality of images, the system comprising:

• means for selecting an image by a manual scrolling method which advances the selected image based upon a repeated user action;
• means for providing a predetermined number of speculation buffers;
• means for organizing the predetermined number of speculation buffers based upon the selected image;
• means for assigning the predetermined number of speculation buffers such that the selected image is decompressed in a first speculation buffer;
• and
• means for ordering the remaining speculation buffers such that the images that are neighboring the selected image are stored in the remaining speculation buffers dependent upon a user interaction.