Patent ID: 7433974

Claim:
An entertainment system for a vehicle comprising: a housing of a size suitable to be mounted in a vehicle dashboard; a faceplate module residing on a faceplate attached to the housing; a computer module having a first processor configured to execute one or more applications; and a support module mounted within the housing, the support module being coupled to the computer module and the faceplate module via a communications bus, the support module including: a data memory including one or more ping/pong buffers; a data processor to process audio data; and a logic unit configured to receive audio data from one or more peripheral audio sources, the logic unit including one or more audio source direct memory access (DMA) circuits, with each audio source DMA circuit being associated with a specific peripheral audio source, and a data processor DMA circuit associated with the data processor, wherein each audio source DMA circuit is configured to: write audio data received from a peripheral audio source to which the audio source DMA circuit is associated to a storage area within the data memory, while the data processor DMA circuit reads previously written audio data from the storage area within the data memory; and further wherein the data processor DMA circuit is configured to: transmit the previously written audio data to the data processor.