Abstract: A method for controlling movement using an active powered device including an actuator, joint position sensor, muscle stress sensor, and control system. The device provides primarily muscle support although it is capable of additionally providing joint support (hence the name “active muscle assistance device”). The device is designed for operation in several modes to provide either assistance or resistance to a muscle for the purpose of enhancing mobility, preventing injury, or building muscle strength. The device is designed to operate autonomously or coupled with other like device(s) to provide simultaneous assistance or resistance to multiple muscles.

Abstract: A high-power electrostatic actuator comprising rotor and stator layers with fault-tolerant electrode structures, a housing to contain the electrodes and dielectric fluid, and electronic circuitry driving a plurality of high-voltage phases. The actuator is constructed from multiple rotor and stator films separated by spacing elements. The electrode structure provides self-alignment for precise assembly. The actuator assembly includes built-in fine-position sensors to allow optimal timing in powering phases, and a coarse position sensor for feedback control. The electrode structure has a large region of linear force to provide low torque-ripple allowing simple high/low voltage pulsing instead of analog high voltage waveforms. Single or double sided flexible circuit manufacturing techniques are used to fabricate the rotor and stator films at low cost.

Abstract: A method for controlling movement using an active powered device including an actuator, joint position sensor, muscle stress sensor, and control system. The device provides primarily muscle support although it is capable of additionally providing joint support (hence the name “active muscle assistance device”). The device is designed for operation in several modes to provide either assistance or resistance to a muscle for the purpose of enhancing mobility, preventing injury, or building muscle strength. The device is designed to operate autonomously or coupled with other like device(s) to provide simultaneous assistance or resistance to multiple muscles.

Abstract: A method and apparatus to manage storage devices has been disclosed. In one embodiment, the method includes logically partitioning each of a number of storage devices in a networked data storage system into segments and managing the segments in response to how often each of the storage devices is accessed. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Abstract: Interconnect networks are described that allow nodes having more than two ports to be interconnected. More particularly, each node interfaces with multiple and more than two, fabrics. Also, all fabrics are incomplete in that not every node interfaces with every fabric, and no fabric includes all the nodes, yet every pair of nodes appears together in at least one fabric. Nodes are used that appear together in a fabric as a class of nodes that exhibit similar interconnection properties. The present invention allows for scalable, high-performance and reliable interconnection of large numbers of end nodes while satisfying constraints on architecture of end nodes and networking equipment. Bounds for the number of fabrics and fabric size are disclosed for designing an optimized interconnection network.

Abstract: A motor that delivers high force linear motion or high torque rotary motion to a moving element. The motor may include a driving brake, a driver, a holding brake and a flexible moving element. Operation of the motor may involve activating the holding brake, activating the driver to flex the moving element, activating the holding brake to maintain the position of a portion of the moving element, releasing the driving brake, and restoring the moving element to an unflexed position. The elements are arranged to provide linear motion, belt-driven rotary motion, or directly-coupled rotary motion using brakes and drivers arranged in linear or circular fashion. Drivers may be linear or rotary actuators or motors based on electrostatic, piezoelectric, magnetic, or electrostrictive properties. The brakes may be applied through electrostatic forces, magnetic forces, or mechanical gears engaged with a linear or rotary driving mechanism.

Abstract: Portable devices and methods for preventing deep vein thrombosis (DVT) by assuring that the ankle is flexed and extended sufficiently to promote blood flow in the lower leg are disclosed. The device includes an actuator with a free movement mode that allows a patient to move freely between activations or to initiate movement to delay a next automatic activation.

Abstract: A motor that delivers high force linear motion or high torque rotary motion to a moving element. The motor may include a driving brake, a driver, a holding brake and a flexible moving element. Operation of the motor may involve activating the holding brake, activating the driver to flex the moving element, activating the holding brake to maintain the position of a portion of the moving element, releasing the driving brake, and restoring the moving element to an unflexed position. The elements are arranged to provide linear motion, belt-driven rotary motion, or directly-coupled rotary motion using brakes and drivers arranged in linear or circular fashion. Drivers may be linear or rotary actuators or motors based on electrostatic, piezoelectric, magnetic, or electrostrictive properties. The brakes may be applied through electrostatic forces, magnetic forces, or mechanical gears engaged with a linear or rotary driving mechanism.

Abstract: A high-power electrostatic actuator comprising rotor and stator layers with fault-tolerant electrode structures, a housing to contain the electrodes and dielectric fluid, and electronic circuitry driving a plurality of high-voltage phases. The actuator is constructed from multiple rotor and stator films separated by spacing elements. The electrode structure provides self-alignment for precise assembly. The actuator assembly includes built-in fine-position sensors to allow optimal timing in powering phases, and a coarse position sensor for feedback control. The electrode structure has a large region of linear force to provide low torque-ripple allowing simple high/low voltage pulsing instead of analog high voltage waveforms. Single or double sided flexible circuit manufacturing techniques are used to fabricate the rotor and stator films at low cost.

Abstract: A method for controlling movement using an active powered device including an actuator, joint position sensor, muscle stress sensor, and control system. The device provides primarily muscle support although it is capable of additionally providing joint support (hence the name “active muscle assistance device”). The device is designed for operation in several modes to provide either assistance or resistance to a muscle for the purpose of enhancing mobility, preventing injury, or building muscle strength. The device is designed to operate autonomously or coupled with other like device(s) to provide simultaneous assistance or resistance to multiple muscles.

Abstract: Adaptive sets of lanes are configured between routers in a system area network. Source nodes determine whether packets may be adaptively routed between the lanes by encoding adaptive control bits in the packet header. The adaptive control bits also facilitate the flushing of all lanes of the adaptive set. Adaptive sets may also be used in uplinks between levels of a fat tree.

Abstract: Real time disk activity data for a disk drive is displayed on a multi-element display in which each display element corresponds to a respective address range or “activity bin” of the disk drive. When an access to the disk drive occurs, the display element associated with the corresponding address is illuminated, with the color of the illuminated element preferably indicating the type of the access (e.g., read versus write). The display thus spatially indicates the type of disk activity occurring. For example, a user can readily determine that a disk drive is being accessed sequentially by identifying that the display elements are being illuminated in sequence over time. In addition, the user can, in many cases, evaluate the operation of an array of disk drives by viewing and comparing the illumination patterns of the associated multi-element displays. For example, a user can easily confirm that one drive in mirroring another drive by verifying that their illumination patterns are synchronized.

Abstract: An image generator is organized into a plurality of rendering engines, each of which renders an image of a part scene and provides the part image to a merge engine associated with that rendering engine. The image is a part image in that it usually contains less than all of the objects in the image to be rendered. The merge engine merges the part image from its associated rendering engine with the part image provided by a prior merge engine and provides the merged part image to a next merge engine. One or more merge engines are designated the output merge engines and these output merge engines output a merged part image that is (a portion of) the ultimate output of the image generator, the full rendered image. Each merge engine performs its merge process on the pixels it has from its rendering engine and from its prior neighbor merge engine, in a pipelined manner and without necessarily waiting for all of the pixels of the part image or the merged part image.

Abstract: The present invention is related to methods and apparatus that can enhance the reliability of a hard drive by providing a built-in error check in the drive. Conventional hard drives can erroneously seek to an incorrect location on a platter of the hard drive. The erroneous seek corrupts the data stream and is difficult to detect and correct. Embodiments of the present invention can detect a logical block address assigned to a portion of the platter of the hard drive and thereby detect when an erroneous seek has occurred. Upon detection of an error, one embodiment of the present invention can further take corrective action to read from the correct portion of the platter.

Abstract: A disk array controller reliably improves performance in RAID configurations without the need for a battery backup. Write completion interrupts are queued until a write cache flush has been performed and are then sent to a host system. States of ranges of disk addresses (activity bins) are stored in nonvolatile storage elements associated with the ranges. The states allow rebuild times to be reduced after power failures and drive failures. A range is in a Changing state if at least one of the addresses is the target of a write operation that has been initiated but not completed. The range is in a Stable state if no addresses are the target of an uncompleted write operation. Two additional states are used to identify ranges of disk addresses that have been zeroed or never been written to. The additional states allow substantial reductions in RAID volume creation times.

Abstract: An image generator is organized into a plurality of rendering engines, each of which renders an image of a part scene and provides the part image to a merge engine associated with that rendering engine. The image is a part image in that it usually contains less than all of the objects in the image to be rendered. The merge engine merges the part image from its associated rendering engine with the part image provided by a prior merge engine and provides the merged part image to a next merge engine. One or more merge engines are designated the output merge engines and these output merge engines output a merged part image that is (a portion of) the ultimate output of the image generator, the full rendered image. Each merge engine performs its merge process on the pixels it has from its rendering engine and from its prior neighbor merge engine, in a pipelined manner and without necessarily waiting for all of the pixels of the part image or the merged part image.

Abstract: The present invention is related to methods and apparatus that can enhance the reliability of a hard drive by providing a built-in error check in the drive. Conventional hard drives can erroneously seek to an incorrect location on a platter of the hard drive. The erroneous seek corrupts the data stream and is difficult to detect and correct. Embodiments of the present invention can detect a logical block address assigned to a portion of the platter of the hard drive and thereby detect when an erroneous seek has occurred. Upon detection of an error, one embodiment of the present invention can further take corrective action to read from the correct portion of the platter.

Abstract: A method for controlling movement using an active powered device including an actuator, joint position sensor, muscle stress sensor, and control system. The device provides primarily muscle support although it is capable of additionally providing joint support (hence the name “active muscle assistance device”). The device is designed for operation in several modes to provide either assistance or resistance to a muscle for the purpose of enhancing mobility, preventing injury, or building muscle strength. The device is designed to operate autonomously or coupled with other like device(s) to provide simultaneous assistance or resistance to multiple muscles.

Abstract: Interconnect networks are described that allow nodes having more than two ports to be interconnected. More particularly, each node interfaces with multiple and more than two, fabrics. Also, all fabrics are incomplete in that not every node interfaces with every fabric, and no fabric includes all the nodes, yet every pair of nodes appears together in at least one fabric. Nodes are used that appear together in a fabric as a class of nodes that exhibit similar interconnection properties. The present invention allows for scalable, high-performance and reliable interconnection of large numbers of end nodes while satisfying constraints on architecture of end nodes and networking equipment. Bounds for the number of fabrics and fabric size are disclosed for designing an optimized interconnection network.

Abstract: A computer system with a pluggable drive carrier assembly comprises a cabinet and a circuit board disposed within the cabinet. The circuit board, such as a base board, has a number of connectors attached to a first surface. A drive unit such as a hard disk drive is secured within a carrier. A logic connector and a power connector are adapted to attach to the drive. A flexible circuit assembly connects the logic connector and the power connector to a blind plug. The blind plug is adapted to mate with any of the number of connectors. A cam surface and lever arrangement is used to urge into engagement the blind plug and the selected one of the number of connectors. The logic connector and the power connector both have a number of contacts that extend in a direction generally parallel to the first surface of the circuit board such that a backplane is not required and can be eliminated.