Patent ID: 6987545

Claim:
An apparatus for assisting in compressing video data in a computer system including a central processing unit and a system memory, comprising: a video input port configured to electrically couple to a video unit for receiving video data for a current video frame from streaming video data; a video input buffer coupled to the video input port for storing the video data from the video input port; a previous frame buffer for storing at least a portion of a previous video frame; an operation unit coupled to the video input buffer and the previous frame buffer for computing a difference frame from data from the video input buffer and data from the previous frame buffer; and a result buffer coupled to the operation unit, the result buffer further including a memory interface configured to couple with the system memory via a first bus independent of a second bus configured for coupling with the central processing unit via a north bridge chip, the result buffer for temporarily buffering the difference frame prior to storing the difference frame in the system memory, the apparatus configured to operate within the north bridge chip of the computer system to enable the central processing unit to retrieve the difference frame exclusive of the second bus and directly from the system memory via the north bridge chip for further compression of the video data by the central processing unit.