Resource manager architecture

• US 20050033846A1
• Filed: 08/31/2004
• Published: 02/10/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 05/02/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Zhigu Holdings Limited
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: McDowell, Sean C., Jones, Michael B., Backman, Terje K., Sather, Dale A., Sankaranarayan, Mukund, Foltz, Forrest C., Srinivasan, Jai, Shaw, George, Raja, Jayachandran, Speed, Robin, Bakin, David S., Parry, William G., Raffman, Andy R.
• Granted Patent: US 7,451,450 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/226
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/5014 Reservation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/522 Manager
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/50 Allocation of resources, e.g. of the central processing unit [CPU]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/526 Mutual exclusion algorithms
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4424 Monitoring of the internal components or processes of the client device, e.g. CPU or memory load, processing speed, timer, counter or percentage of the hard disk space used error monitoring in general G06F11/30; arrangements for monitoring conditions of receiving stations in broadcast systems H04H60/32; diagnosis, testing or measuring for television receivers H04N17/04
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/443 OS processes, e.g. booting an STB, implementing a Java virtual machine in an STB or power management in an STB

Abstract

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.

Claims

1. A resource manager comprising:

means for registering resources with a resource manager;

means for receiving, from consumers of the resources, requests to reserve sets of the resources to perform associated tasks;

means for evaluating whether the requests can be satisfied;

in an event that the requests can be satisfied, means for reserving the sets of the resources on behalf of the consumers; and

in an event that all of the requests cannot be satisfied, means for determining which of the requests can be satisfied and reserving the sets of the resources on behalf of the consumers that submitted those requests.

2. A method comprising:

registering resources with a resource manager;

receiving, from consumers of the resources, requests to reserve sets of the resources to perform associated tasks;

evaluating whether the requests can be satisfied;

in an event that the requests can be satisfied, reserving the sets of the resources on behalf of the consumers; and

in an event that all of the requests cannot be satisfied, determining which of the requests can be satisfied and reserving the sets of the resources on behalf of the consumers that submitted those requests.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the evaluating comprises determining whether the resources can be allocated to the consumers according to a priority-based policy.

4. The method of claim 2, further comprising notifying the consumers whose requests could not be satisfied that their reservation requests failed.

5. The method of claim 2, further comprising preventing consumers from using the resources without first reserving the resources.

6. The method of claim 2, further comprising establishing at the resource manager multiple alternate configurations of resources that may be utilized to perform a task.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising switching from one configuration to another configuration to perform the task.

8. The method of claim 6, further comprising dynamically switching from one configuration to another configuration to perform the task without interrupting processing of the task.

9. The method of claim 6, further comprising:

ranking the configurations in order of preference; and

downgrading from a more preferred configuration to a less preferred configuration to perform the task.

10. A computer-readable medium comprising computer executable instructions that, when executed, direct a computer system to perform the method of claim 2.

11. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions that, when executed, direct a computing device to:

receive requests to reserve sets of the resources to perform associated tasks;

evaluate whether the requests can be satisfied;

in an event that the requests can be satisfied, reserve the sets of the resources; and

in an event that all of the requests cannot be satisfied, determine which of the requests can be satisfied and reserve the sets of the resources to satisfy the requests.

12. An operating system embodied on the computer-readable medium of claim 11 and comprising the computer-executable instructions.