US 2008/0168284 A1 · Design Structure for System for Extending the useful Life of Another System

Abstract

Disclosed is a design structure for an associated first system for extending product life of a second system in the presence of phenomena that cause the exhibition of both performance degradation and recovery properties within system devices. The first system includes duplicate devices incorporated into the second system (e.g., on a shared bus). These duplicate devices are adapted to independently perform the same function within that second system. Reference signal generators, a reference signal comparator, a power controller and a state machine, working in combination, can be adapted to seamlessly switch performance of that same function within the second system between the duplicate devices based on a measurement of performance degradation to allow for device recovery. A predetermined policy accessible by the state machine dictates when and whether or not to initiate a switch.

Claims18

Dependent claims

A design structure embodied in a machine readable medium, the design structure comprising a first system for extending the useful life of a second system, said first system comprising:

duplicate devices adapted to independently perform a same function within said second system;
reference signal generators incorporated into each of said duplicate devices and adapted to generate reference signals that indicate a value associated with performance degradation of each of said duplicate devices;
a comparator adapted to receive and compare said reference signals;
and
a state machine in communication with said comparator and with each of said duplicate devices,
wherein said state machine is adapted to alternately power-up and power-down said duplicate devices as dictated by a predetermined policy and based on relative performance degradation between said duplicate devices that is indicated by a minimum difference between said reference signals, and
wherein alternately powering-up and powering-down said duplicate devices allows said duplicate devices to recover following performance degradation.

4 more elements

A design structure embodied in a machine readable medium, the design structure comprising a first system for extending the useful life of a second system, said first system comprising:

duplicate devices adapted to independently perform a same function within said second system;
reference signal generators incorporated into each of said duplicate devices and adapted to generate reference signals that indicate a value associated with performance degradation of each of said duplicate devices;
a comparator adapted to receive and compare said reference signals;
and
a state machine in communication with said comparator and with each of said duplicate devices,
wherein said state machine is adapted to alternately power-up and power-down said duplicate devices as dictated by a predetermined policy and based on relative performance degradation between said duplicate devices that is indicated by a minimum difference between said reference signals,
wherein alternately powering-up and powering-down said duplicate devices allows said duplicate device to recover following performance degradation, and
wherein said state machine is further adapted to balance load distribution by powering-up more than one of said duplicate devices as dictated by load management objectives in said predetermined policy.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Design Structure for System for Extending the useful Life of Another System

Life of this patent

Design Structure for System for Extending the useful Life of Another System

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims18