Abstract: A camera for automatically triggering a plurality of exposures during a pan based on a measure of camera displacement. During a pan, the camera regularly acquires images to compare a recently acquired image to a reference image. If the recently acquired image is optimally overlapped with the reference image, an exposure is triggered. In a digital camera, the images may be acquired with the native imager. In a film-based camera, or as an alternative embodiment for the digital camera, a sensor may be used to measure displacement. A series of images comprising a pan may be stored in the camera, or alternatively, each subsequent image may be stitched to a previous image to create a single panoramic image.

Abstract: A fault tolerant availability meter includes agents for stand-alone computers and each node of a cluster. The agents monitor availability with timestamps and report uptime and downtime events to a server. Additionally, agents on nodes of a cluster monitor cluster, node and package availability and cluster configuration changes and report these event to the server. Events are stored locally on the stand-alone computers and nodes, and additionally, on the server. Events are tracked with a sequence numbers. If the server receives an out-of-sequence event, an agent-server recovery procedure is initiated to restore the missing events from either the agents or the server. The server may generate availability reports for all monitored entities, including one or more stand-alone computers and one or more clusters of computers. Availability is distinguished by planned and unplanned downtime. Furthermore, unavailable and unreachable systems are identified.

Abstract: A 3D graphics controller configurable to simultaneously copy portions of a pixel region between a back buffer and a front buffer. The 3D graphics controller includes four memory controllers, each controlling a bank of frame buffer memory. A sequence of addresses defining a pixel region is generated. The addresses are distributed to the four memory controllers according to the memory banks (addresses) coupled thereto. Each memory controller is configured to read pixels according to the addresses and a first offset; and write the pixels according to the addresses and a second offset. The offsets are chosen so as not to shift pixels within the banks. Therefore, each memory controller simultaneously and independently copies a portion of the pixel region without accessing any other memory banks resulting in a copy of the entire pixel region.

Abstract: A method of avoiding processor state transitions while rendering frames includes forming a command data buffer and a data structure in response to drawing commands received from a graphics application. The command data buffer includes a list of primitives. The data structure identifies a texture and where in the command data buffer (offset) the texture should be referenced. Multiple texture changes can be accumulated at user level before making a ring transition to kernel mode to process the command data buffer. After the command data buffer and data structure are formed, kernel mode is entered so that a graphics driver can communicate the command data buffer to graphics hardware. While in kernel mode offsets stored in the data structure cause the driver to verify that the texture is present in graphics memory. If not present, the driver causes the texture to be loaded before continuing to communicate the primitives. Thus, multiple textures can be loaded the kernel session.