SYCHRONIZING THE OPERATION OF A COMPUTING MEANS WITH A REFERENCE FREQUENCY SIGNAL

摘要

A microprocessor embodied in an integrated circuit has a clock signal generator comprising an inverter in the integrated circuit and a frequency determining network external to the integrated circuit connected to the inverter through terminals. The clock signal generator generates a clock signal which determines the frequency of the instruction cycles of the microprocessor. The operation of the microprocessor is synchronized with a television horizontal rate signal by programming it to generate a comparison signal each time a predetermined number of instruction cycles, selected so that the comparison signal has the same nominal frequency as the horizontal rate signal have occurred. The simple wired AND gate serves as coincidence detector for the horizontal rate signal and the comparison signal and generates a pulse error signal representing the phase and frequency deviations between its two input signals. The error signal is filtered and coupled to the inverter to control the phase and frequency of the clock signal. This microprocessor synchronization arrangement is used to form characters on the screen of a picture tube without the need of an additional character generator.