System and methods for accelerated data storage and retrieval

Abstract

Systems and methods for providing accelerated data storage and retrieval utilizing lossless and / or lossy data compression and decompression. A data storage accelerator includes one or a plurality of high speed data compression encoders that are configured to simultaneously or sequentially losslessly or lossy compress data at a rate equivalent to or faster than the transmission rate of an input data stream. The compressed data is subsequently stored in a target memory or other storage device whose input data storage bandwidth is lower than the original input data stream bandwidth. Similarly, a data retrieval accelerator includes one or a plurality of high speed data decompression decoders that are configured to simultaneously or sequentially losslessly or lossy decompress data at a rate equivalent to or faster than the input data stream from the target memory or storage device. The decompressed data is then output at rate data that is greater than the output rate from the target memory or data storage device. The data storage and retrieval accelerator method and system may employed: in a disk storage adapter to reduce the time required to store and retrieve data from computer to disk; in conjunction with random access memory to reduce the time required to store and retrieve data from random access memory; in a display controller to reduce the time required to send display data to the display controller or processor; and / or in an input / output controller to reduce the time required to store, retrieve, or transmit data.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION [0001] This application is a Continuation-in-Part of U.S. application Ser. No. 09 / 266,394 filed on Mar. 11, 1999.BACKGROUND [0002] 1. Technical Field [0003] The present invention relates generally to data storage and retrieval and, more particularly to systems and methods for improving data storage and retrieval bandwidth utilizing lossless and / or lossy data compression and decompression. [0004] 2. Description of the Related Art [0005] Information may be represented in a variety of manners. Discrete information such as text and numbers are easily represented in digital data. This type of data representation is known as symbolic digital data. Symbolic digital data is thus an absolute representation of data such as a letter, figure, character, mark, machine code, or drawing. [0006] Continuous information such as speech, music, audio, images and video frequently exists in the natural world as analog information. As is well-known to those skilled i...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0021] In yet another aspect of the present invention, the method for providing accelerated data storage utilizes a compression ratio that is at least equal to the ratio of the input data transmission rate to the data storage rate so as to provide continuous storage of the input data stream at the input data transmission rate. Moreover, the method for providing accelerated data retrieval utilizes a decompression ratio which is equal to or greater than the ratio of the data access rate to a maximum accepted output data transmission rate so as to provide a continuous and optimal data output transmission rate.

[0027] The present invention is realized due to recent improvements in processing speed, inclusive of dedicated analog and digital hardware circuits, central processing units, digital signal processors, dedicated finite state machines (and any hybrid combinations thereof), that, coupled with advanced data compression and decompression algorithms, are enabling of ultra high bandwidth data compression and decompression methods that enable improved data storage and retrieval bandwidth.

Problems solved by technology

Lossy data compression techniques provide for an inexact representation of the original uncompressed data such that the decoded (or reconstructed) data differs from the original unencoded / uncompressed data.

For example, lossy data compression of visual imagery might seek to delete information content in excess of the display resolution or contrast ratio of the target display device.

One problem with the current art is that the bandwidth and storage capacity of existing memory storage devices severely limit the performance of consumer, entertainment, office, workstation, servers, and mainframe computers for all disk and memory intensive operations.

For example, magnetic disk mass storage devices currently employed in a variety of home, business, and scientific computing applications suffer from significant seek-time access delays along with profound read / write data rate limitations.

Another problem within the current art is that emergent high performance disk interface standards such as the Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI-3) and Fibre Channel offer only the promise of higher data transfer rates through intermediate data buffering in random access memory.

These interconnect strategies do not address the fundamental problem that all modern magnetic disk storage devices for the personal computer marketplace are still limited by the same physical media restriction of 22 MB / sec.

Additional problems with bandwidth limitations similarly occur within the art by all other forms of sequential, pseudo-random, and random access mass storage devices.

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