Patent ID: 7562187

Claim:
For use by a laser driver that includes a laser driver serial controller, driver registers and driver timing memory, a method for double buffering serial transfers between the laser driver and a host during a write operation, the laser driver configured to drive a laser diode of an optical storage device, the method comprising: (a) serially receiving a first word from the host at the laser driver serial controller of the laser driver, the first word including first address bits and first data bits; (b) serially transferring the first address bits of the first word received from the host into an address shift register of the laser driver; (c) serially transferring the first data bits of the first word received from the host into a data shift register of the laser driver; (d) after completing the serial transfer of the first address bits into the address shift register at step (b), transferring in parallel, the first address bits from the address shift register into an address holding register of the laser driver; (e) after completing the serial transfer of the first data bits into the data shift register at step (c), transferring in parallel, the first data bits from the address shift register into a data holding register of the laser driver; and (f) after completing the parallel transfer of the first address and data bits from the address and data shift registers to the address and data holding registers at steps (d) and (e), serially transferring second address and data bits of a second word received from the host into the address and data shift registers, prior to the first data bits in the data holding register being written to a location within the driver registers or driver timing memory identified by the first address bits in the address holding register; wherein step (a) includes serially receiving the first word from the host at a bi-directional input/output terminal of the laser driver serial controller of the laser driver.