CLOUD-BASED FILE PREFETCHING ON ELECTRONIC DEVICES

• US 20140095591A1
• Filed: 10/01/2013
• Published: 04/03/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 10/02/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Razer (Asia-Pacific) Pte. Ltd. (Razer Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: Nextbit Systems, Inc. (Razer Incorporated)
• Inventors: Fleming, Michael K., Chan, Michael A., Quan, Justin
• Granted Patent: US 10,311,108 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/203
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/125 characterised by the use of retention policies retention policies for HSM systems G06F16/185
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/174 Redundancy elimination performed by the file system management of the data involved in backup or backup restore using de-duplication of the data G06F11/14
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/20 of structured data, e.g. relational data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/27 Replication, distribution or synchronisation of data between databases or within a distributed database system; Distributed database system architectures therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/273 Asynchronous replication or reconciliation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/275 Synchronous replication
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/278 Data partitioning, e.g. horizontal or vertical partitioning
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5038 considering the execution order of a plurality of tasks, e.g. taking priority or time dependency constraints into consideration scheduling strategies G06F9/4881 and subgroups
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 7/26 at least one of which is mobile
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/06 specially adapted for file transfer, e.g. file transfer protocol [FTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1095 Replication or mirroring of data, e.g. scheduling or transport for data synchronisation between network nodes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1097 for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/55 Push-based network services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/568 Storing data temporarily at an intermediate stage, e.g. caching
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/72412 using two-way short-range wireless interfaces
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2250/10 including a GPS signal receiver
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2250/12 including a sensor for measuring a physical value, e.g. temperature or motion telephones including GPS signal receivers H04M2250/10
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management

Abstract

Techniques introduced here enable cloud-based file prefetching on electronic devices. The electronic devices store certain files on a remote storage server and preload some of the files locally to include file access efficiency. File access patterns on the electronic devices are analyzed collectively and efficiently using a cloud service to detect global access patterns and help determine which files to preload on each of the electronic devices.

Claims

1. A method performed by a processor on a server that is connected to a plurality of client devices over networks, comprising the steps of:

receiving a usage profile from one of the client devices, wherein the usage profile contains access statistics of files that have been accessed by the client device;

analyzing usage profiles received from more than one of the client devices collectively to generate a prefetching profile for the client device, wherein the prefetching profile specifies files that are likely to be accessed in the future by the client device; and

sending the prefetching profile to the client device.

2. The method of claim 1,

wherein the server is further connected to a cloud-computing system, and

wherein the analyzing step comprises the steps of:

submitting the usage profile to the cloud-computing system for storage;

submitting a request to the cloud-computing system to collectively analyze stored usage profiles received from the more than one of the client devices; and

receiving the prefetching profile from the cloud-computing system.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the access statistics indicate when a file was accessed by the client device.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the analysis is based on an order in which multiple files are accessed by the any of the client devices.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the analysis is based on a time distribution at which one or more files are accessed by any of the client devices;

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the access statistics indicate where the client device was when a file was accessed by the client device.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the analysis is based on relative locations of multiple client devices when one or more files are accessed by any of the multiple client devices.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein the analysis is based on a device location distribution at which one or more files are accessed by any of client devices.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the analyzing step includes assigning different weights to the usage profile received from the client device and usage profiles received from other client devices, in generating the prefetching profile for the client device.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the prefetching profile indicates for each of the specified files a likelihood in which the file will be accessed within a predetermined timeframe.

11. The method of claim 1, where the prefetching profile is sent in response to a request from the client device.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the prefetching profile is sent according to a predetermined schedule.

13. A method performed by a processor on one of a plurality of client devices connected to a server over networks, comprising the steps of:

sending a usage profile to the server, wherein the usage profile contains access statistics of files that have been accessed by the client device; and

receiving a prefetching profile from the server, wherein the prefetching profile specifies files that are likely to be accessed by the client device in the future based on a collective analysis of usage profiles sent by more than one of the client devices.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising the steps of:

retrieving from an external source the files that are specified by the prefetching profile but are not present in a first storage of the client device; and

storing the retrieved files in a second storage of the client device.

15. The method of claim 14,

wherein the prefetching profile indicates for each of the specified files a likelihood in which the file will be accessed within a predetermined timeframe, and

wherein the retrieval of the specified files is performed in order of likelihood.

16. The method of claim 14, further comprising the steps of:

receiving a request for a file;

determining whether the file is in the first storage;

determining whether the file is in the second storage when it is determined that the file is not in the first storage; and

moving the file from the second storage to the first storage when it is determined that the file is in the second storage.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprising the steps of:

retrieving the file from an external source when it is determined that the file is not in the second storage; and

storing the retrieved file in the first storage.

18. The method of claim 16, further comprising the step of serving the file from the first storage in response to the request.

19. A method performed by a processor on a server that is connected to at least one client device over a network, comprising:

receiving usage profiles from a client device, wherein each of the usage profiles contains access statistics of files that have been accessed by one of multiple computer applications executed at the client device;

analyzing the usage profiles collectively to generate a prefetching profile for the client device, wherein the prefetching profile specifies files that are likely to be accessed in the future by the client device; and

sending the prefetching profile to the client device.

20. A client device connected to a server, comprising:

a sending unit which sends a usage profile to the server, wherein the usage profile contains access statistics of files that have been accessed by the client device; and

a receiving unit which receives a prefetching profile from the server, wherein the prefetching profile specifies files that are likely to be accessed by the client device in the future based on a collective analysis of usage profiles sent by more than one of client devices connected to the server.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein the client devices connected to the server include a mobile device.