The present invention provides a contention arbitration apparatus and method which can fully utilize the advantages of physical devices and can be flexibly adapted to a change of the physical devices. A contention arbitration apparatus 1 includes: a resource information storing section 14 for storing resource information; a device information storing section 18 for storing device information indicating a correspondence between a logic device and resources; a used resource recognizing section 13 ...

A system comprises a master device and a first integrated circuit buffer device. A first plurality of integrated circuit memory devices are coupled to the first integrated circuit buffer device. A first plurality of signal lines are coupled to the first integrated circuit buffer device and the master device, wherein the first plurality of signal lines communicate control information, address information and data from the master device to the first integrated circuit buffer device. A second plura...

In one embodiment of the present invention, there is disclosed, a method of handling data which is being written to and stored in flash memory, wherein input data, comprising information data and overhead data, undergoes a reversible transformation before being written to flash memory whereupon each bit stored in flash memory, as flash data, is a function of both information data and header data.

A method and apparatus for selectively disabling sense amplifiers to reduce power consumption in a memory bus interface are disclosed. The method includes amplifying data signals from a memory bus interface. The amplified data signals are sampled, and the amplifier is selectively disabled in response to the absence or end of a predetermined operation occurring over the memory bus. In some embodiments of the invention, the amplification may be selectively enabled in response to the beginning of t...

A priority encoder circuit (300) for a content addressable memory (CAM) device is disclosed that may include a priority selection circuit (310) that receives match results (M0 to Mz) and provides prioritized match results (P0 to Pz), and a logic section (350) that logically combines prioritized match results (P0 to Pz) to generate a smaller number of encoder inputs (RWL0 to RWLr). A logic section (350) can also generate a first portion (ID0) of an encoded value (ID0 to IDX). Encoder entries (314...

A method and apparatus for virtually expanding the rapid-access memory space of a device employing time-critical software modules and having various modes of operation. Each of the modes of operation of the device is identified. For each mode of operation, the time-critical software modules used during the mode are identified. The software modules used during all modes of operation are permanently stored in rapid-access memory. However, a software module that is used only during a particular mod...

A schedule-controlling unit selects a file whose remaining time for playback is the shortest among files to be restored and compares the remaining time for playback of the selected file with a reference time set in advance. When the remaining time for playback is longer than the reference time, the schedule-controlling unit again selects a file in which a distance parameter of a partition of unrestored data to be subsequently restored is the lowest among files to be restored. A restoring unit re...

A very large virtual storage volume formed by distributing disks in multiple, multi-disk RAID (redundant array of independent disks) sets across busses of a back-end controller. The multiple RAID sets are striped by a front-end controller connected to the back-end controller and presented to a host computer as a very large virtual storage volume.

Disclosed herewith is a scalable disk array controller inter-connection network to be employed for a disk array system in which a plurality of disk array controllers connected to each another are expected to be operated as one disk array controller. The inter-connection network enables such disk array controllers to be added/removed without service interruption while the system reliability is kept as is. Each of the plurality of disk array controllers comprises a channel IF unit; a disk IF unit;...

A method is proposed for virtual enlargement of the stack of a portable data carrier allowing reloading of executable program code. To permit the execution of programs requiring a larger stack than that physically present, the stack is segmented into at least two stack segments and their fill state monitored. When complete occupation of a segment is recognized, the oldest stack segment is swapped out to a further storage medium. The further storage medium is a nonvolatile read-write memory that ...