Music – Instruments – Electrical musical tone generation
Reexamination Certificate
1999-12-17
2001-09-18
Donels, Jeffrey (Department: 2837)
Music
Instruments
Electrical musical tone generation
C084S653000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06291757
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to an apparatus and method for generating music data and a medium for providing music data, and more particularly to a music data generating apparatus and method and a medium for providing a program for generating music data that are suitable for synchronous control processing among multiple incorporated computing units.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a music data generating apparatus which contains a plurality of computing units and generates music data by interlinking these computing units and performing operating processes, if it is decided that, in accordance with some kind of timing among the computing units, the music data generating processes of other units have been completed (synchronization has been achieved), when each computing unit has received notification that synchronization has been achieved, in the past, normally a method has been used whereby the notification is received either passively by means of an interrupt from another computing unit, or actively by sequentially confirming specified variables corresponding to synchronization information that have been assigned in advance in a main memory.
Nevertheless, when an interrupt is passively received by each computing unit, it is necessary to incorporate into each computing unit a processing content that differs from the normal processing flow, and the interrupt process itself also becomes a complex and troublesome process for the computing units (e.g., saving of the working register, etc.). Moreover, in the case where each computing unit actively operates by frequently accessing a main memory and sequentially confirming specified variables corresponding to synchronization information, since several computing units are frequently and continuously accessing the common part (main bus) of the main memory, due to the complexity of this accessing process, the process often interferes with the process of accessing the main memory by other computing units.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention was made in light of this situation and has an object of using a status holding part, which enables each computing unit to perform access within its own resources. By providing access parts in the main memory separately for each computing unit and performing synchronization information processing using an external synchronization information processing part, the present invention makes it possible to reduce the amount of complex processing performed by each computing unit and to reduce the amount of accessing to shared regions in the main memory.
The above and other objects of the present invention are attained by a music data generating apparatus comprising: a plurality of computing units each including a status holding part for performing access within own resources thereof and branch processing and carrying out specified operations on data necessary for music generation; memory means, which stores completion results of operating processes of said plurality of computing units; and distribution means, which distributes the completion results stored in said memory means to the status holding parts of said computing units.
According to the present invention a music data generating method comprises: a plurality of operating steps, which have a status holding function to perform access within its own resources and branch processing, and to carry out specified operations on data necessary for music generation; a step of storing the completion results of operating processes of said plurality of operating steps; and a step of distributing the completion results stored by said storing step to the status holding function of said operating steps.
The music data providing medium of the present invention includes a program whereby a music data generating apparatus is made to execute a process comprising: a plurality of operating steps, which have a status holding function that can perform access within its own resources and branch processing and which carry out specified operations on data necessary for music generation; a storing step for storing completion results of operating processes of said plurality of operating steps; and a distribution step for distributing the completion results stored in said storing step to the status holding functions of said operating steps.
In the present invention, specified arithmetic operations are performed on the data necessary for generating music, flags, for example, respectively representing the completion of an arithmetic operation are stored, and it is determined whether or not all of the processes have been completed from the stored flags, and the determination results are provided.
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patent: WO 90/03640 (1990-04-01), None
Donels Jeffrey
Helfgott & Karas, PC.
Sony Corporation Entertainment Inc.
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