Application-specific power management

• US 8,635,475 B2
• Filed: 10/27/2010
• Issued: 01/21/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 10/27/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Lin, Qingwei, Li, Fan, Li, Jiang
• Primary Examiner(s): CONNOLLY, MARK A
• Application Number:
  US12/913,381
• Publication Number:
  US 20120110360A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,182 Days
• Field of Search: 713/300, 713/320
• US Class Current: 713/320
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3215 Monitoring of peripheral devices
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3228 Monitoring task completion, e.g. by use of idle timers, stop commands or wait commands
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3265 Power saving in display device
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/50 in wire-line communication networks, e.g. low power modes or reduced link rate

Abstract

An application-specific power management technique may establish a separate power-down interval for one or more applications based on user interaction with the one or more applications. In some implementations, during use of a particular application, when a management component determines that a period of user inactivity has become greater than or equal to the particular power-down interval established for the particular application, the management component may initiate a power down of one or more components, such as a display.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

collecting user interaction information with respect to one or more applications that are used on a computing device;

determining, for an individual application of the one or more applications, a statistical distribution of time intervals between interactions that includes a percentage distribution of a group of time intervals of the time intervals;

establishing, by a processor of the computing device, a power-down interval for an application of the one or more applications based on the percentage distribution of the statistical distribution for the application; and

powering down a display of the computing device when a period of a user inactivity exceeds a particular power-down interval corresponding to a particular application that was last used on the computing device.

2. The method according to claim 1, further comprising receiving feedback from a user of the computing device in response to powering down of the display, wherein the feedback comprises an input to the computing device from the user.

3. The method according to claim 2, further comprising, in response to the feedback, increasing a length of time of the particular power-down interval corresponding to the particular application.

4. The method according to claim 1, further comprising, when no feedback is received, decreasing a length of time of the particular power-down interval to determine whether the particular power-down interval can be optimized for maximizing power savings.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein

there are a plurality of the applications;

and

the individual application has a corresponding application-specific power-down interval determined based on the user interaction information collected when the application is used on the computing device.

6. The method according to claim 1, further comprising adjusting the power-down interval based on a user habit associated with the particular application.

7. A method comprising:

collecting, by a computing device including one or more processors, user interaction information for a particular application to determine an initial power-down interval for the particular application, the user interaction information including a plurality of time intervals, an individual time interval of the plurality of time intervals representing a time period between detected user interaction with an individual application of a plurality of applications;

establishing, by the computing device including one or more processors, a particular power-down interval corresponding to the particular application based on the user interaction information and on a confidence value that represents a probability that at least one component will not be powered-down while a user is using the computing device;

detecting, by the computing device including one or more processors, that a period of user inactivity following use of the particular application has exceeded the particular power-down interval established for the particular application; and

in response to the detecting, initiating, by the by the computing device including one or more processors, power conservation for the at least one component.

8. The method according to claim 7, wherein:

the at least one component is a display; and

the initiating power conservation comprises placing the display into a low-power mode.

9. The method according to claim 7, wherein the detecting that a period of user inactivity following use of the particular application has exceeded the particular power-down interval established for the particular application further comprises detecting that no user inputs have been received following a last input by the user for interaction with the particular application.

10. The method according to claim 7, further comprising:

receiving, by the computing device including one or more processors, feedback in response to initiating the power conservation; and

responsive to the feedback, increasing, by the computing device including one or more processors, a length of time of the power-down interval.

11. The method according to claim 10, wherein increasing a length of time of the power-down interval further comprises increasing the length of time of the power-down interval based on a tuning factor.

12. The method according to claim 7, further comprising, when no feedback is received in response to initiating the power conservation, decreasing, by the computing device including one or more processors, a length of time of the power-down interval.

13. The method according to claim 7, further comprising adjusting the particular power-down interval based on a user habit associated with the particular application.

14. Computer-readable storage media containing processor-executable instructions to be executed by a processor for carrying out the method according to claim 7.

15. A computing device comprising:

a processor in communication with storage media;

an activity-tracking component, maintained in the storage media and executed on the processor, to collect user interaction information with respect to a plurality of applications used on the computing device, the user interaction information including a plurality of time intervals, an individual time interval of the plurality of time intervals that represents a period of time between detected user interaction with one of the applications; and

a modeling component to determine a distribution of time intervals for an individual application of the applications for establishing a power-down interval for the individual application, the power-down interval being refined by analyzing a log that includes historical interactions between a user and the individual application, the distribution of time intervals including a percentage distribution of a group of time intervals of the time intervals.

16. The computing device according to claim 15, further comprising a control component to compare the power-down interval for a particular application with a period of user inactivity when the particular application is active on the computing device for powering-down a component of the computing device when the period of user inactivity equals or exceeds the power-down interval for the particular application.

17. The computing device according to claim 16, wherein the modeling component is configured to:

receive feedback in response to the powering down of the component of the computing device; and

adjust the power-down interval for the particular application responsive to the feedback.

18. The computing device according to claim 17, wherein the modeling component is configured to adjust the power-down interval for the particular application based at least on historic user interaction with the particular application.

19. The computing device according to claim 16, wherein the control component is further configured to receive a list of the applications and corresponding power-down intervals, wherein the list indicates that a power-down interval for at least one of the applications of the plurality of applications is manually configurable.

20. The computing device according to claim 15, wherein the analyzing a log tracking historical interactions between a user and the individual application comprises analyzing the log tracking historical interactions between the user and the individual application based freshness of the historical interactions.