Patents by Inventor Mark A. Sprague

Mark A. Sprague 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).

  • Patent number: 6738058
    Abstract: A method and apparatus for compression and decompression of a two dimensional video object such that the video object may subsequently be displayed as a three dimensional object is generally accomplished by a set-up engine which receives vertex parameters and generates a plurality of derivatives and Bresenham parameters, therefrom. The derivatives and Bresenham parameters are provided to an edgewalker circuit which produces, therefrom, a plurality of spans which, in turn, is converted in to a set of texel addresses by a texel address generator. A texel fetch circuit receives the set of texel addresses and uses the addresses to retrieve a set of texels, which is subsequently processed by a texel processor to produce a filtered pixel. To retrieve the set of texels, the texel fetch circuit retrieves a set of indexes based on the texel addresses and uses the set of texels to retrieve the set of texels from a codebook.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 30, 1997
    Date of Patent: May 18, 2004
    Assignee: ATI Technologies, Inc.
    Inventors: Andrew E. Gruber, Mark A. Sprague
  • Patent number: 6339531
    Abstract: A dockable equipment container includes an outer shell of a durable material and an inner metallic container. The inner container is suspended within the outer shell by blocks of energy absorbent material, such as SORBATHANE. The dockable equipment container further includes a connector at one end, which is covered by a protective door. When mated with external equipment, the protective door is moved to an open position by an alignment device, such as alignment pins, pressing against an end of the protective door. The alignment pins mate with corresponding alignment holes for ensuring that the connector properly mates with a corresponding connector in the external equipment. The dockable equipment container may contain various electronic equipment, which communicates with the external equipment through the connector. The electronic equipment may include disk drives, which are protected from the environment and from shock by the construction of the dockable equipment container.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 22, 1999
    Date of Patent: January 15, 2002
    Assignee: Avid Technology, Inc.
    Inventors: James A. McKain, Peter Fasciano, Alan Denny, Raymond W. Imblum, Mark A. Sprague, Robert F. Deal, Morton Tarr
  • Patent number: 6043821
    Abstract: A method and apparatus for rendering pixel information from blended texture information is accomplished by generating first texture information and second texture information for a given pixel location. Having generated this information, the first and second texture information is blended, based on a blending function, to produce blended texture information. The blended texture information is then used to render the pixel information at the given pixel location. This process continues for each pixel location of an object element of an object, image, and/or scene.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 30, 1997
    Date of Patent: March 28, 2000
    Assignee: ATI Technologies, Inc.
    Inventors: Mark A. Sprague, Richard J. Fuller
  • Patent number: 5999406
    Abstract: A dockable equipment container includes an outer shell of a durable material and an inner metallic container. The inner c,ontainer is suspended within the outer shell by blocks of energy absorbent material, such as SORBATHANE. The dockable equipment container further includes a connector at one end, which is covered by a protective door. When mated with external equipment, the protective door is moved to an open position by an alignment device, such as alignment pins, pressing against an end of the protective door. The alignment pins mate with corresponding alignment holes for ensuring that the connector properly mates with a corresponding connector in the external equipment. The dockable equipment container may contain various electronic equipment, which conmmunicates with the external equipment through the connector. The electronic equipment may include disk drives, which are protected from the environment and from shock by the construction of the dockable equipment container.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 17, 1997
    Date of Patent: December 7, 1999
    Assignee: Avid Technology, Inc.
    Inventors: James A. McKain, Peter Fasciano, Alan Denny, Raymond W. Imblum, Mark A. Sprague, Robert F. Deal, Morton Tarr