Patents by Inventor Stephen K. Howell

Stephen K. Howell 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: 5912673
    Abstract: A parallel processor which is capable of partitioned multiplication and partitioned addition operations convolves multiple pixels in parallel. The parallel processor includes a load and store pipeline of a load and store unit which retrieves data from and stores data to memory and one or more arithmetic processing pipelines of an arithmetic processing unit which aligns data and performs partitioned multiplication and partitioned addition operations. A patch of pixels from a source image are convolved substantially simultaneously in the arithmetic processing pipeline of the processor by execution of the partitioned multiplication and partitioned addition operations. At substantially the same time, a subsequent patch of pixels from the source image are read by the load and store unit of the processor.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 27, 1995
    Date of Patent: June 15, 1999
    Assignee: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
    Inventors: Stephen K. Howell, Jaijiv Prabhakaran
  • Patent number: 5815164
    Abstract: An image rescaling method utilizing a parallel processor is provided. The computer-implemented method includes the steps of loading multiple word components into a processor in one machine instruction, each word component associated with a pixel of an image; rescaling the multiple word components in parallel; and packing the rescaled multiple word components into an image buffer in one machine instruction. Additionally, a second set of multiple word components may be processed concurrently with the processing of a first set of multiple word components.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 27, 1995
    Date of Patent: September 29, 1998
    Assignee: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
    Inventor: Stephen K. Howell
  • Patent number: 5802219
    Abstract: In a processor, a method for performing table-lookup transformation through a look-up table a source image having a plurality of source pixels to derive a destination image having a plurality of destination pixels. The method includes the step of deriving, for each value in a source pixel of the plurality of source pixels, a look-up result. The aforementioned look-up result represents a value in a corresponding destination pixel of the plurality of destination pixels. The method further includes the steps of loading a plurality of the look-up results into a plurality of graphics registers in the processor and accumulating the plurality of the look-up results in the plurality of graphics registers into an accumulation register in the processor. Additionally, there is also provided the step of storing the accumulation register into the destination image.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 27, 1995
    Date of Patent: September 1, 1998
    Assignee: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
    Inventors: Peter Farkas, Stephen K. Howell, Daniel S. Rice
  • Patent number: 5801719
    Abstract: Image operations are implemented using a specially developed instruction set in a parallel processing environment that maximizes parallelization of operations. Graphics data partitioned addition and multiplication instructions allow for simultaneous addition or multiplication of multiple words of graphics data in parallel using a number of processing sub-units of a graphics execution unit.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 27, 1995
    Date of Patent: September 1, 1998
    Assignee: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
    Inventors: Amandeep Jabbi, Stephen K. Howell
  • Patent number: 5694490
    Abstract: A system and method for a simultaneous multi-band block-stop filter is disclosed. The block-stop filter provides rapid filtering of an input data stream by simultaneously comparing a plurality of data band components to the low threshold, associated with the band of which the particular data band component is a member, and then simultaneously comparing the plurality of data band components to an associated high threshold. The block-stop filter can also improve performance by parallelizing the act of storing the filtered data band components into the output data stream.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 27, 1995
    Date of Patent: December 2, 1997
    Assignee: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
    Inventors: Stephen K. Howell, Liang He