Hardware cross-emulation using personas
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorEdward O. Clapper
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An apparatus and method for a device to boot as though it were another device. The various devices have published personas describing their operation. A persona selection interface enables a user to select a remote device as which the local device should reboot. Updated personas can be retrieved from the remote devices themselves, or from a persona server. If the emulated operation requires a resource not locally available, the local device negotiates with the remote device to share the remote resource, and failing that, the local device emulates the resource.
Claims30
An apparatus for communicating with an external device, the apparatus comprising:
- a communication interface for connecting to the external device;
- a persona selection interface for enabling a user to select between a persona of the apparatus and a persona of the external device;
- and
- a persona emulation engine, coupled to the communication interface and the persona selection interface, for booting the apparatus with the persona selected by the user.
An apparatus comprising:
- a processor;
- storage storing a plurality of locally stored copies of remote personas of respective external devices;
- a display;
- means, coupled to the processor and the storage, for presenting a persona selection interface on the display, the persona selection interface including identifiers of the external devices;
- and
- means for booting the apparatus using the locally stored copy of the remote persona of an external device selected by a user via the persona selection interface.
A method of operating an apparatus, the method comprising:
- presenting a persona selection interface to a user, the persona selection interface identifying a plurality of external devices;
- receiving from the user a selection of one of the external devices;
- rebooting the apparatus with a persona of the selected external device.
A system comprising:
- a communication network;
- and
- coupled to the communication network, a plurality of persona equipped devices, each including,
- (a) a common data interface,
- (b) an interface emulation file,
- (c) a persona selection interface,
- (d) storage for locally storing copies of remote personas of at least some of the other persona equipped devices,
- (e) a processor,
- (f) a communication interface,
- (g) a persona emulation engine.
A machine accessible medium including therein instructions which, when executed by the machine, cause the machine to:
- present a persona selection interface to a user, the persona selection interface identifying a plurality of external devices;
- receive from the user a selection of one of the external devices;
- and
- reboot the apparatus with a persona of the selected external device.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.