Patent ID: 7246199

Claim:
A laser driver for driving a laser diode of an optical storage device that includes an optical disk, the laser driver including: timers that are used to produce mark-space edges on a surface of the optical disk; driver registers including land and groove amplitude registers; driver timing memory that stores delays of said timers for various mark-space sequences; a laser driver serial controller 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 configured to send a serial data output signal to the host; an address shift register to serially receive address bits from the host, the address bits identifying a location, within said driver registers or said driver timing memory, to which to write data bits, or from which to read data bits; a data shift register, to serially receive data bits from the host during a write operation, and to serially transfer data bits to the host during a read operation; an address holding register to receive a parallel transfer of address bits from said address shift register; and a data holding register, to receive a parallel transfer of data bits from said data shift register during a write operation, and to transfer in parallel data bits to said data shift register during a read operation; 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 said driver timing memory identified by the address in said address holding register.