Inventors:
Keiichiro Hyodo - Los Gatos CA, US
Peter Johnston - San Mateo CA, US
Allan Hessenflow - Los Gatos CA, US
Assignee:
Minolta Co., Ltd - Osaka-shi
International Classification:
G06F 3/12
Abstract:
An imaging device with an improved controller is disclosed wherein the controller eliminates duplicated circuitry and provides multiuser circuitry that efficiently replaces multiple dedicated circuit blocks. In one aspect, duplicated same-function circuit blocks are replaced with a switch controlled by an alignment control signal to operate as a multiplexer or demultiplexer. In another aspect, multiple different-function circuit blocks which generally have no temporal overlap of their active operation are replaced with a programmable logic device that is reconfigured dynamically to perform some subset of the different functions on an as-needed basis.