Abstract: A digital-versatile disk (DVD) playback-controller integrated circuit (IC) writes data to a block in an embedded memory buffer while row syndromes are being generated in parallel. The block has rows and columns. Row syndromes are generated on-the-fly as the data is written from the DVD disk to the memory buffer. Row syndrome generation thus requires no memory access cycles. Column syndrome generation is delayed until row correction is completed. Once errors in the rows identified by the row syndromes are corrected, column syndromes are generated. The bytes received from the DVD disk for the current row are accumulated into intermediate row syndromes. Received bytes are accumulated for the row until all of the row's bytes have been received and accumulated. The final accumulated row syndromes are written to the embedded memory buffer for later row error-correction.

Abstract: Synchronization (sync) marks on a digital-versatile disk (DVD) optical disk are initially detected and later used to adjust bit timing after jitter has occurred. Each DVD physical sector contains many sync marks in a predefined sequence. Each sync mark has a sync-code field that varies for the sync marks in a sector, and a fixed sync pattern that is constant for all sync marks. The first sync mark is detected at initialization by detecting a previous sequence of sync codes of sync marks that precede the first sync mark. The sequence is programmable so that one to seven sync marks are in the sequence searched for. Detection for sync marks with bit errors can still occur since a programmable number of bit errors are allowed in each sync code and in the fixed sync pattern. One of the sync codes can be missed in the sequence and detection still made, allowing tolerance of errors in the sync marks when longer sequences of sync codes are matched.

Abstract: An optical disk controller reads CD-ROM disks at high speeds that commonly produce errors. Errors in the headers that identify sectors are tolerated by the sector-search hardware. The disk-controller firmware writes a virtual target register the previous sector's header's minutes, seconds, frame (MSF), which is one less that the desired sector's MSF, or MSF-1. A physical target that precedes the virtual target is searched for. The physical target precedes the desired sector by N sectors, so that the physical target is MSF-N. When the physical target matches a header read from the disk, a good sector found flag is set. The physical target is then incremented for each new sector and compared to the virtual target. Once the physical target matches the virtual target, the following sector is buffered to the host. The raw header from the disk is stored and error corrections are made using the error correction byte following the sector's data.

Abstract: An embedded DRAM is incorporated inside a digital-versatile-disk (DVD) playback-controller integrated circuit. Data from the DVD optical disk is written to a data block in the embedded DRAM. Error correction is performed by reading the data block to generate syndromes and over-writing errors in the data block with corrections. Once the data block is corrected, it is copied or moved to a different area of the embedded memory, a host-buffer area. As the data block is moved, de-scrambling is performed to decrypt the data. The re-ordered data is stripped of overhead such as ECC bytes and written to the host-buffer area of the embedded DRAM. A checksum is generated as the data is moved, and the checksum is compared to a stored checksum to ensure that all errors were corrected. The data block in the host-buffer area is then transferred to a host. The embedded DRAM has a very wide data-access width of 16 bytes.

Abstract: A digital-versatile disk (DVD) playback-controller integrated circuit (IC) writes data to a block in an embedded DRAM memory. The memory block has rows and columns. Data read from a DVD optical disk is read in row order. Rather than write the DVD data across the rows in the memory block, the DVD data is accumulated into 16-byte words, and successive 16-byte words are written down a column in the memory block. Each row from the DVD disk is written to a 16-byte-wide column in the memory block. The embedded DRAM has a wide 16-byte interface, so all 16 bytes in a word are written during a single memory-access cycle. All the bytes in the memory block must be read in column-order for column-syndrome generation. Since the row-column ordering is reversed, the column-syndrome generator reads bytes across the memory-block rows. Most of these fetches are DRAM page hits, so access speed is improved for column-syndrome generation.

Abstract: A digital-versatile disk (DVD) controller interfaces to an AT bus using ATAPI commands delivered in command packets. A microcontroller executes firmware routines to control the servo that positions the read head, and reads data sectors from the DVD disk. The microcontroller also performs error correction on the DVD data in a disk buffer. A host state machine is used to interface to the AT bus. State transitions in the host state machine are enabled or blocked by the microcontroller by setting auto-transition bits in a state-control register. The microcontroller can set auto bits to allow the host state machine to automatically receive multi-byte command packets, or to transfer data or send status to the host without microcontroller intervention. The microcontroller also has the option of performing any of these steps manually, such as for more complex ATAPI commands. Overlapping ATAPI commands are allowed when the AT bus is released.