Multiple simultaneous access

Abstract

This invention concerns a resource held in computer memory and multiple parallel processors which require simultaneous access to the resource. The resource may be a dither matrix or volume used for digitally halftoning a contone color image, in the form of an array of contone color pixel values, to bi-level dots, and this may be required to be accessed by different thresholding units in parallel. In another aspect the invention is a method of accessing such a resource. The resource is divided into different parts with each part being stored in different memory banks, and a resource address generator generates coordinates which are used to select the parts of the resource that are used by each processor, the selection being arranged to ensure that each part is only used by one processor at a time.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.