{
  "patent_number": "US 6362826",
  "country": "US",
  "title": "How Intel's Memory Hub Manages Graphics Data Across Different Memory Types",
  "original_title": "Method and apparatus for implementing dynamic display memory",
  "summary": "A hardware design for a computer memory hub that lets a processor treat different types of memory as one unified space for graphics tasks.",
  "what_it_does": "This patent describes a memory control hub that acts as a traffic cop between a computer's main processor and its memory. When the processor needs to access graphics data, the hub checks if the data is a graphics operand. If it is, the hub uses a translation table to map the processor's virtual address to the actual physical location of the data, which might be in main system memory or dedicated graphics memory. This allows the system to seamlessly move or store graphics data across two different memory pools while keeping the processor's job simple.",
  "what_it_does_not_cover": [
    "Does not cover software-only methods for memory management that lack a hardware memory control hub.",
    "Does not cover systems that only use a single unified memory pool without a translation table mechanism.",
    "Does not cover methods of graphics rendering or image processing algorithms themselves."
  ],
  "filed": "1999-01-15",
  "granted": "2002-03-26",
  "expires": "2019-01-15",
  "status": "expired",
  "holder": "Intel Corp",
  "holder_url": "https://patentbrief.org/company/intel-corp",
  "inventors": [
    {
      "name": "Peter Doyle",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/peter-doyle"
    },
    {
      "name": "Aditya Sreenivas",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/aditya-sreenivas"
    }
  ],
  "times_cited": 25,
  "tags": [
    "semiconductors",
    "consumer_electronics"
  ],
  "abstract": "A method and apparatus for implementing a dynamic display memory is provided. A memory control hub suitable for interposition between a central processor and a memory includes a graphics memory control component. The graphics memory control component determines whether operands accessed by the central processor are graphics operands. If so, the graphics memory control component transforms the virtual address supplied by the central processor to a system address suitable for use in locating the graphics operand in the memory. In one embodiment, the graphics control component maintains a graphics translation table in the memory and utilizes the graphics translation table in transforming virtual addresses to system addresses. Furthermore, in one embodiment, the graphics control component reorders the addresses of the graphics operands to optimize for performance memory accesses by a graphics device.",
  "url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/6362826/method-and-apparatus-for-implementing-dynamic-display-memory",
  "markdown_url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/6362826/method-and-apparatus-for-implementing-dynamic-display-memory/md",
  "google_patents_url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US6362826",
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}