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AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorsMukund Sankaranarayan, Forrest C. Foltz, George Shaw, Dale A. Sather, Andy R. Raffman, Jai Srinivasan, Terje K. Backman, William G. Parry, David S. Bakin, Michael B. Jones, Sean C. McDowell, Jayachandran Raja, Robin Speed
Estimating the term…
Resource management architectures implemented in computer systems to manage resources are described. In one embodiment, a general architecture includes a resource manager and multiple resource providers that support one or more resource consumers such as a system component or application. Each provider is associated with a resource and acts as the manager for the resource when interfacing with the resource manager. The resource manager arbitrates access to the resources provided by the resource providers on behalf of the consumers. A policy manager sets various policies that are used by the resource manager to allocate resources. One policy is a priority-based policy that distinguishes among which applications and/or users have priority over others to use the resources. A resource consumer creates an “activity” at the resource manager and builds one or more “configurations” that describe various sets of preferred resources required to perform the activity. Each resource consumer can specify one or more configurations for each activity. If multiple configurations are specified, the resource consumer can rank them according to preference. This allows the resource consumers to be dynamically changed from one configuration to another as operating conditions change.
A resource management architecture comprising:
A resource management architecture comprising:
A resource management architecture comprising:
A resource management architecture comprising:
A resource management architecture comprising:
A resource management architecture comprising:
A resource management architecture comprising:
A resource manager, comprising:
A resource manager comprising:
A method comprising:
A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions that, when executed, direct a computing device to:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.
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Multiprogramming arrangements: allocation of resources, e.g. of the central processing unit [CPU]
Program synchronisation; Mutual exclusion, e.g. by means of semaphores: mutual exclusion algorithms
Monitoring of processes or resources, e.g. detecting the failure of a recording device, monitoring the downstream bandwidth, the number of times…
Processing of content or additional data, e.g. demultiplexing additional data from a digital video stream; Elementary client operations, e.g.…: oS…
Term ended 2 May 2020 (estimated)
USPTO file history isn’t available for this patent, so only indexed dates are shown.
This invention relates to computers and more particularly, to systems and methods for managing resources of the computers.
Computers are evolving well beyond their traditional desktop roots. In addition to conventional desktop applications (e.g., word processing, spreadsheets, email, etc.), today's personal computers (PCs) are asked to play audio and video files, play music CDs (compact discs), receive and display broadcast programming, and so forth. Much of this evolution is being driven by the continued convergence of computing, Internet, telephony, and entertainment technologies.
As a result, the look, feel, and functionality of computers are continuing to evolve for different consumer and operating environments. For instance, computers designed for home entertainment might be implemented as a set-top box or a game console, equipped with browser software, one or more tuners, EPG (electronic programming guide) software, different audio/video drivers, and gaming software. Computers designed for office use may resemble conventional desktop PCs in appearance, but be implemented with broadcast tuners, DVD (digital video disks) drives, stereo speakers with surround sound, and so forth, to offer a more enhanced computing experience. The variety and functionality of portable computers are even wider ranging as the demands of the mobile user increase.
The same numbers are used throughout the drawings to reference like elements and features.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an exemplary computing unit in the form of an entertainment computing unit in accordance with one embodiment.
FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an exemplary resource management architecture that is implemented by the computing unit of FIG. 1.
This disclosure describes a resource management architecture for managing resources in a computer system. A resource is a finite quantity of a computing component in the computer system that is utilized to perform various tasks or functions. Examples of resources include hardware devices, ports, CPU processing, memory, USB bandwidth, network bandwidth, software modules, and so forth. A resource may be a physical hardware quantity (e.g., CPU, USB bandwidth, network bandwidth) or an abstract quantity (e.g., virtual memory, audio volume).
Managing limited resources is becoming increasingly important as computer systems are asked to perform more tasks simultaneously, and for multiple users. Consider, for example, a TV-enabled computing system (e.g., broadcast PC, set-top box, etc.) that has a single TV tuner. There may be multiple processes that need to use the TV tuner in order to do their processing. For instance, a TV viewer application needs the TV tuner to provide a video stream that the application displays on a monitor. A TV recorder application might also need the TV tuner to provide a video stream that the application encodes and records on a hard disk for later playback. Unfortunately, the TV tuner can only tune to one TV channel at a time. If there is only one TV tuner in the system, the system is forced to choose between watching a show or recording a show as it cannot do both at the same time (unless both applications want to tune to the same TV channel).
In another situation, perhaps multiple applications concurrently require bandwidth on a Universal Serial Bus (USB). One application might specify bandwidth requirements that consume 20% of the existing USB bandwidth, while another might specify bandwidth that would consume 15%. Further suppose that a combined bandwidth, if all requests were met, would exceed the available USB bandwidth. In this scenario, one or more of the applications might be prevented from gaining access to the USB resource and/or be allocated less than the requested amount.