Patent application number | Description | Published |
20130126013 | FUEL SUPPLY AND METHOD OF MANUFACTURE - A high energy density fuel source that reduces hydride expansion during hydrogen release, including a rigid, thermally insulated container defining an internal volume, a heater mechanism disposed within the internal volume, and a metal hydride rod thermally connected to the heater mechanism, wherein the heater mechanism and metal hydride rod substantially occupying the entirety of the internal volume. The metal hydride rod preferably includes a malleable encapsulation compressed about, thermally coupled to, and substantially encapsulating a volume of compressed metal hydride powder, the malleable encapsulation defined by a first, thermally conductive, malleable cup inverted over a second, thermally conductive, malleable cup, the compressed malleable encapsulation defining a tortuous fluid flow path from the metal hydride to the internal volume of the container. | 05-23-2013 |
20130147276 | SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR MANAGING A FUEL CELL - A method of operating a power adapter that includes an energy storage device and a fuel cell system including a fuel supply and a fuel cell stack, the method including determining a connectivity state of an auxiliary power source and a load with the power adapter, and selecting a power adapter operation mode based on the connection states of the auxiliary power source and the load. The operation modes of the power adapter include at least an auxiliary mode when the auxiliary power source and the load are connected to the power adapter, and a fuel cell mode when the auxiliary power source is disconnected from the power adapter and the load is connected to the power adapter. The auxiliary mode includes providing power from the auxiliary power source to the load, and the fuel cell mode includes providing fuel cell power to the load. | 06-13-2013 |
20130149626 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DEVICE POWER MANAGEMENT - A method for controlling fuel cartridge supply for a device powered by a fuel cell system, the fuel cell system including a fuel cell stack that converts fuel from the fuel cartridge into electrical power, the method including receiving operation data from each of a plurality of devices at a first time period, calculating a future fuel cartridge demand from the operation data, the future fuel cartridge demand associated with a second time period after the first time period, calculating a target fuel cartridge manufacturing volume from the future hydrogen cartridge demand, and sending the target fuel cartridge manufacturing volume to a manufacturing facility. | 06-13-2013 |
Patent application number | Description | Published |
20150096352 | SMART-HOME SYSTEM FACILITATING INSIGHT INTO DETECTED CARBON MONOXIDE LEVELS - In an embodiment, a method determines one or more sources of carbon monoxide (CO) in a smart-home environment that includes a plurality of smart devices that have at least measurement and communication capabilities. The method includes measuring a level of CO in the smart-home environment to generate a CO measurement, and providing the CO measurement and one or more current characteristics of the smart-home environment, from one or more of the smart devices to an analyzing device. The method further includes evaluating, by the analyzing device and with the CO measurement and the current characteristics of the smart-home environment, a set of CO correlation scenarios that attribute generation of CO to a corresponding one of a set of specific sources, and selecting one or more of the specific sources as the most likely source of the CO, by aggregating results of the correlation scenarios. | 04-09-2015 |
20150097665 | SMART-HOME HAZARD DETECTOR PROVIDING SENSOR-BASED DEVICE POSITIONING GUIDANCE - A particular smart hazard detector may itself function as a guide during a process of installation of the same at an installation location. Additionally, the installation location of the particular smart hazard detector may play a central role in how various settings of the smart hazard detector are defined and adjusted over time. | 04-09-2015 |
20150097958 | SMART-HOME SECURITY SYSTEM WITH KEYPAD DEVICE RESISTANT TO ANOMALOUS TREATMENT - Security keypad device for detecting tampering includes a keypad, a high power wireless module for communicating data via a local area network, a low power wireless module communicating data via a personal area network, and a cellular module for communicating data via a wide area network. The device further includes an active infrared position sensor comprising of a light source for emitting infrared light and an infrared sensor for detecting reflected infrared light. The active infrared position sensor is configured to sense the position of the device based on detecting the reflected infrared light. The device further includes an accelerometer configured to measure acceleration forces and a processor. The processor is configured to determine that the position of the device changed based on positional data from the active infrared position sensor or acceleration data from the accelerometer. | 04-09-2015 |
20150254970 | SMART-HOME HAZARD DETECTOR PROVIDING SENSOR-BASED DEVICE POSITIONING GUIDANCE - A particular smart hazard detector may itself function as a guide during a process of installation of the same at an installation location. Additionally, the installation location of the particular smart hazard detector may play a central role in how various settings of the smart hazard detector are defined and adjusted over time. | 09-10-2015 |
20160078751 | SMART-HOME HAZARD DETECTOR PROVIDING SENSOR-BASED DEVICE POSITIONING GUIDANCE - A particular smart hazard detector may itself function as a guide during a process of installation of the same at an installation location. Additionally, the installation location of the particular smart hazard detector may play a central role in how various settings of the smart hazard detector are defined and adjusted over time. | 03-17-2016 |
Patent application number | Description | Published |
20140078145 | SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR PROGRAM INTERFACES IN MULTIPASS RENDERING - Aspects include API interfaces for interfacing shaders with other components and/or code modules that provide ray tracing functionality. For example, API calls may allow direct contribution of light energy to a buffer for an identified pixel, and allow emission of new rays for intersection testing alone or in bundles. The API also can provide a mechanism for associating arbitrary data with ray definition data defining a ray to be tested through a shader using the emit ray call. The arbitrary data is provided to a shader associated with an object that is identified subsequently as having been intersected by the ray. The data can include code, or a pointer to code, that can be used by or run after the shader. The data also can be propagated through a series of shaders, and associated with rays instantiated in each shader. Recursive shaders can be recompiled as non-recursive shaders interfacing with API semantics according to the description. | 03-20-2014 |
20140232720 | RAY TRACING SYSTEM ARCHITECTURES AND METHODS - Aspects comprise systems implementing 3-D graphics processing functionality in a multiprocessing system. Control flow structures are used in scheduling instances of computation in the multiporcessing system, where different points in the control flow structure serve as points where deferral of some instances of computation can be performed in favor of scheduling other instances of computation. In some examples, the control flow structure identifies particular tasks, such as intersection testing of a particular portion of an acceleration structure, and a particular element of shading code. In some examples, the aspects are used in 3-D graphics processing systems that can perform ray tracing based rendering. | 08-21-2014 |
20140327683 | Graphics Processor with Non-Blocking Concurrent Architecture - In some aspects, systems and methods provide for forming groupings of a plurality of independently-specified computation workloads, such as graphics processing workloads, and in a specific example, ray tracing workloads. The workloads include a scheduling key, which is one basis on which the groupings can be formed. Workloads grouped together can all execute from the same source of instructions, on one or more different private data elements. Such workloads can recursively instantiate other workloads that reference the same private data elements. In some examples, the scheduling key can be used to identify a data element to be used by all the workloads of a grouping. Memory conflicts to private data elements are handled through scheduling of non-conflicted workloads or specific instructions and/or deferring conflicted workloads instead of locking memory locations. | 11-06-2014 |
20140333610 | SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR 3-D SCENE ACCELERATION STRUCTURE CREATION AND UPDATING - Systems and methods for producing an acceleration structure provide for subdividing a 3-D scene into a plurality of volumetric portions, which have different sizes, each being addressable using a multipart address indicating a location and a relative size of each volumetric portion. A stream of primitives is processed by characterizing each according to one or more criteria, selecting a relative size of volumetric portions for use in bounding the primitive, and finding a set of volumetric portions of that relative size which bound the primitive. A primitive ID is stored in each location of a cache associated with each volumetric portion of the set of volumetric portions. A cache location is selected for eviction, responsive to each cache eviction decision made during the processing. An element of an acceleration structure according to the contents of the evicted cache location is generated, responsive to the evicted cache location. | 11-13-2014 |
20140333622 | Building Acceleration Structures with Synthetic Acceleration Shapes for Use in Ray Tracing - A synthetic acceleration shape bound primitives composing a 3-D scene, and is defined using a group of fundamental shapes arranged to bound the primitives, and for which intersection results for group members yield an ultimate intersection testing result for the synthetic shape, using a logical operator. For example, two or more spheres are used to bound an object so that each of the spheres is larger than a minimum necessary to bound the object, and a volume defined by an intersection between the shapes defines a smaller volume in which the object is bounded. A ray is found to potentially intersect the object only if it intersects both spheres. In another example, an element may be defined by a volumetric union of component elements. Indicators can determine how groups of shapes should be interpreted. Synthetic shapes can be treated as a single element in a graph or hierarchical arrangement of acceleration elements. | 11-13-2014 |
20150089156 | Atomic Memory Update Unit & Methods - In an aspect, an update unit can evaluate condition(s) in an update request and update one or more memory locations based on the condition evaluation. The update unit can operate atomically to determine whether to effect the update and to make the update. Updates can include one or more of incrementing and swapping values. An update request may specify one of a pre-determined set of update types. Some update types may be conditional and others unconditional. The update unit can be coupled to receive update requests from a plurality of computation units. The computation units may not have privileges to directly generate write requests to be effected on at least some of the locations in memory. The computation units can be fixed function circuitry operating on inputs received from programmable computation elements. The update unit may include a buffer to hold received update requests. | 03-26-2015 |
20150116325 | PROCESSOR WITH RAY TEST INSTRUCTIONS PERFORMED BY SPECIAL PURPOSE UNITS - A processor supports special-purpose instructions relating to testing rays for intersection with geometry and acceleration structure elements. The processor can be a full-featured processor; the special-purpose instructions can be differentiated from other supported instructions. The processor can have an instruction generator coupled with an instruction decoder, a data cache, a fetch unit, and a set of test cells for performing computations indicated by special-purpose instructions. Separate test cells can test rays with scene geometry and with acceleration structure elements; different instructions can be provided for each type of testing. The data cache is coupled to the test cells; the instruction decoder also provides input to the test cells while the test cells are coupled to a write back unit that is coupled to the data cache and to the instruction generator. In an example, the instruction decoder supplies ray references from an instruction as functional addresses to the data cache. | 04-30-2015 |
20150262407 | Object Illumination in Hybrid Rasterization and Ray Traced 3-D Rendering - Rendering systems that can use combinations of rasterization rendering processes and ray tracing rendering processes are disclosed. In some implementations, these systems perform a rasterization pass to identify visible surfaces of pixels in an image. Some implementations may begin shading processes for visible surfaces, before the geometry is entirely processed, in which rays are emitted. Rays can be culled at various points during processing, based on determining whether the surface from which the ray was emitted is still visible. Rendering systems may implement rendering effects as disclosed. | 09-17-2015 |
20150262409 | Rendering of Soft Shadows - Systems can identify visible surfaces for pixels in an image (portion) to be rendered. A sampling pattern of ray directions is applied to the pixels, so that the sampling pattern of ray directions repeats, and with respect to any pixel, the same ray direction can be found in the same relative position, with respect to that pixel, as for other pixels. Rays are emitted from visible surfaces in the respective ray direction supplied from the sampling pattern. Ray intersections can cause shaders to execute and contribute results to a sample buffer. With respect to shading of a given pixel, ray results from a selected subset of the pixels are used; the subset is selected by identifying a set of pixels, collectively from which rays were traced for the ray directions in the pattern, and requiring that surfaces from which rays were traced for those pixels satisfy a similarity criteria. | 09-17-2015 |
20150302630 | COMPACTING RESULTS VECTORS BETWEEN STAGES OF GRAPHICS PROCESSING - Ray tracing, and more generally, graphics operations taking place in a 3-D scene, involve a plurality of constituent graphics operations. Responsibility for executing these operations can be distributed among different sets of computation units. The sets of computation units each can execute a set of instructions on a parallelized set of input data elements and produce results. These results can be that the data elements can be categorized into different subsets, where each subset requires different processing as a next step. The data elements of these different subsets can be coalesced so that they are contiguous in a results set. The results set can be used to schedule additional computation, and if there are empty locations of a scheduling vector (after accounting for the members of a given subset), then those empty locations can be filled with other data elements that require the same further processing as that subset. | 10-22-2015 |
20150317818 | On Demand Geometry and Acceleration Structure Creation - Systems and methods of geometry processing, for rasterization and ray tracing processes provide for pre-processing of source geometry, such as by tessellating or other procedural modification of source geometry, to produce final geometry on which a rendering will be based. An acceleration structure (or portion thereof) for use during ray tracing is defined based on the final geometry. Only coarse-grained elements of the acceleration structure may be produced or retained, and a fine-grained structure within a particular coarse-grained element may be produced in response to a collection of rays being ready for traversal within the coarse-grained element. Final geometry can be recreated in response to demand from a rasterization engine, and from ray intersection units that require such geometry for intersection testing with primitives. Geometry at different resolutions can be generated to respond to demands from different rendering components. | 11-05-2015 |
20150339798 | Graphics Processor with Non-Blocking Concurrent Architecture - In some aspects, systems and methods provide for forming groupings of a plurality of independently-specified computation workloads, such as graphics processing workloads, and in a specific example, ray tracing workloads. The workloads include a scheduling key, which is one basis on which the groupings can be formed. Workloads grouped together can all execute from the same source of instructions, on one or more different private data elements. Such workloads can recursively instantiate other workloads that reference the same private data elements. In some examples, the scheduling key can be used to identify a data element to be used by all the workloads of a grouping. Memory conflicts to private data elements are handled through scheduling of non-conflicted workloads or specific instructions and/or deferring conflicted workloads instead of locking memory locations. | 11-26-2015 |
20160063753 | Ray Tracing System Architectures and Methods - Aspects comprise systems implementing 3-D graphics processing functionality in a multiprocessing system. Control flow structures are used in scheduling instances of computation in the multiporcessing system, where different points in the control flow structure serve as points where deferral of some instances of computation can be performed in favor of scheduling other instances of computation. In some examples, the control flow structure identifies particular tasks, such as intersection testing of a particular portion of an acceleration structure, and a particular element of shading code. In some examples, the aspects are used in 3-D graphics processing systems that can perform ray tracing based rendering. | 03-03-2016 |