Patent ID: 7353333

Claim:
A laser driver for driving a laser diode of an optical storage device, the laser driver comprising: driver registers and driver timing memory that are used for storing amplitude and timing information that is used when writing user data to an optical disk of the optical storage device; a laser driver serial controller configured to control serial transfers between said driver registers and driver timing memory of the laser driver and a host, said laser driver serial controller configured to receive a serial enable (SEN) signal, a serial clock (SCLK) signal and a serial data input signal from the host, and said laser driver serial controller also configured to send a serial data output signal to the host; an address holding register; a data holding register; an address shift register to serially receive address bits from the host during a write or read operation, and to transfer the address bits in parallel to said address holding register; a data shift register to serially receive data bits from the host during a write operation, and to transfer the data bits in parallel to said data holding register; wherein the address bits identify a location, within said driver registers or said driver timing memory, to which to write data bits, or from which to read data bits; and wherein during a write operation, after the parallel transfers of the address bits and data bits from said address and data shift registers to said address and data holding registers, said address and data shift registers are available to serially receive additional address bits and data bits from the host, prior to the data bits in said data holding register being written to the location within said driver registers or driver timing memory identified by the address in said address holding register.