Patents by Inventor John P. Coffey

John P. Coffey has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Method and apparatus for virtualizing off-screen memory of a graphics engine
    Patent number: 5757386
    Abstract: An application request for off-screen VRAM is satisfied transparently to the application by allocating off-screen VRAM, if available, or system RAM if off-screen VRAM is unavailable. In addition, a list is kept of previous memory requests so that requests which were satisfied by allocating system RAM can be switched to off-screen VRAM, if such off-screen VRAM should later become available. Allocation of off-screen VRAM is controlled by a device driver that responds to various application memory requests and controls the off-screen VRAM resources, among other things. The device driver receives an allocation request for off-screen VRAM and determines whether the request may be honored with available off-screen VRAM resources. If the request can be honored with available off-screen VRAM resources, the device driver allocates a portion of the available off-screen VRAM resources to honor the request and decreases the amount of available off-screen VRAM resources.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 11, 1995
    Date of Patent: May 26, 1998
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Joseph Celi, Jr., John P. Coffey, Jonathan Mark Wagner