Multi-threaded processes for opening and saving documents

• US 8,356,300 B2
• Filed: 08/08/2012
• Issued: 01/15/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 06/27/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Sudzilouski, Uladzislau, Zaika, Igor
• Primary Examiner(s): Alrobaye, Idriss N
• Application Number:
  US13/569,595
• Publication Number:
  US 20120297172A1
• Time in Patent Office: 160 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 718/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/506 Constraint
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/509 Offload
• 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

Abstract

Tools and techniques are described for multi-threaded processing for opening and saving documents. These tools may provide load processes for reading documents from storage devices, and for loading the documents into applications. These tools may spawn a load process thread for executing a given load process on a first processing unit, and an application thread may execute a given application on a second processing unit. A first pipeline may be created for executing the load process thread, with the first pipeline performing tasks associated with loading the document into the application. A second pipeline may be created for executing the application process thread, with the second pipeline performing tasks associated with operating on the documents. The tasks in the first pipeline are configured to pass tokens as input to the tasks in the second pipeline.

Claims

1. A computer-readable storage medium that is not a signal, the computer-readable storage medium having computer-executable instructions stored thereon that, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to:

provide a load process for reading a document from a storage device and loading the document into an application;

spawn a load process thread to execute the load process on a first processing core provided by a multi-core central processing unit;

spawn an application thread to execute the application on a second processing core of the multi-core processing unit;

create a first pipeline for executing the load process thread, wherein the first pipeline performs tasks associated with loading the document into the application;

create a second pipeline for executing the application, wherein the second pipeline performs tasks associated with performing operations on the document, and wherein the first pipeline is configured to pass tokens as input to the tasks in the second pipeline;

provide a circular queue for storing tokens from the first pipeline and to pass the tokens to the tasks in the second pipeline; and

provide a synchronization primitive for regulating access to the circular queue.

2. The storage medium of claim 1, wherein the instructions for spawning the load process thread include instructions for spawning the load process thread for executing on a first processor provided by a multiprocessor system, and wherein the instructions for spawning the application thread include instructions for spawning the application thread for executing on a second processor provided by the multiprocessor system.

3. The storage medium of claim 1, wherein the tasks in the first pipeline operate separately and independently from the tasks in the second pipeline.

4. The storage medium of claim 1, wherein at least one of the tasks in the first pipeline operates in parallel with at least one of the tasks in the second pipeline.

5. The storage medium of claim 1, further comprising instructions for resolving at least one of the tokens to a string variable associated with opening the document.

6. The storage medium of claim 1, further comprising instructions for creating a third pipeline for executing the load process thread and for performing a plurality of tasks associated with reading the document from the storage device, and wherein the tasks in the second pipeline are configured to pass tokens as input to the tasks in the third pipeline.

7. A method comprising:

providing, at a computer, a load process for reading a document from a storage device and loading the document into an application executing at the computer;

spawning a load process thread to execute the load process on a first processing core provided by a multi-core processing unit at the computer;

spawning an application thread to execute the application on a second processing core of the multi-core processing unit at the computer;

creating a first pipeline for executing the load process thread, wherein the first pipeline performs tasks associated with loading the document into the application;

creating a second pipeline for executing the application, wherein the second pipeline performs tasks associated with performing operations on the document, and wherein the first pipeline is configured to pass tokens as input to the tasks in the second pipeline;

providing a circular queue for storing tokens from the first pipeline and to pass the tokens to the tasks in the second pipeline; and

providing a synchronization primitive for regulating access to the circular queue.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein spawning the load process thread comprises spawning the load process thread on a first processor, and wherein spawning the application thread comprises spawning the application thread on a second processor.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein the tasks in the first pipeline operate separately and independently from the tasks in the second pipeline.

10. The method of claim 7, wherein at least one of the tasks in the first pipeline operates in parallel with at least one of the tasks in the second pipeline.

11. The method of claim 7, further comprising resolving at least one of the tokens to a string variable associated with storing the document.

12. A computer storage medium that is not a signal, the computer storage medium having computer executable instructions stored thereon that, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to:

provide a load process for reading a document from a storage device and loading the document into an application;

spawn an application thread to execute the application on a first processing core of provided by a multi-core central processing unit;

spawn a load process thread to execute the load process on a second processing core of provided by a multi-core central processing unit;

create a first pipeline for executing the application thread and for performing a plurality of tasks associated with operating on the document;

create a second pipeline for executing the load process thread and for performing a plurality of tasks associated with loading the document from the storage device, wherein the tasks in the first pipeline are configured to pass tokens to the tasks in the second pipeline;

provide a circular queue to receive the tokens from the tasks in the first pipeline and to pass the tokens to the tasks in the second pipeline; and

provide a synchronization primitive to regulate access to the circular queue.

13. The computer storage medium of claim 12, wherein the tasks in the first pipeline operate independently from the tasks in the second pipeline.

14. The computer storage medium of claim 12, wherein at least one of the tasks in the first pipeline operates in parallel with at least one of the tasks in the second pipeline.