Systems and Methods for Improving Performance of Computer Systems

• US 20120047509A1
• Filed: 08/23/2010
• Published: 02/23/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 08/23/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Avast Software SRO (Gen Digital Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AVG Netherlands B.V. (Gen Digital Inc.)
• Inventors: Ben-Itzhak, Yuval
• Granted Patent: US 9,280,391 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/103
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3409 for performance assessment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3438 monitoring of user actions tracking the activity of the user H04L67/535
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/5021 Priority
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4881 Scheduling strategies for dispatcher, e.g. round robin, multi-level priority queues
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/50 Allocation of resources, e.g. of the central processing unit [CPU]
• 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

Priorities of an application and/or processes associated with an application executing on a computer is determined according to user-specific usage patterns of the application and stored for subsequent use, analysis and distribution.

Claims

1. A method of prioritizing the execution of applications by a computer, the method comprising:

programmatically monitoring a user-specific usage pattern for a computer application;

maintaining a database of one or more computer applications requiring computing resources;

assigning execution priorities to at least a subset of the applications based on the user-specific computer application usage patterns; and

updating the database with the execution priorities.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising allocating one or more computing resources to the computer applications based on the assigned priorities, thereby causing the execution of the computer applications to be influenced by the user-specific application usage patterns.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the user is selected from the group consisting of an individual, a class of individuals, and an automatic processor.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the computer applications comprise an operating system.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the computer applications comprise a virtual machine.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the computer applications comprise a plurality of processes and the execution priorities are assigned to each process.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the execution priorities for each process differ among processes associated with one application.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein monitoring computer application usage patterns comprises one or more of detecting a time of day each of the applications is used, a duration the each of the applications is used, a frequency each of the applications is used during a specified time period, functions executed within each of the applications, detecting an active window within each of the applications, and detecting transactions executed from within each of the applications.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the computing resources comprise one or more of CPU time, memory, storage and bandwidth.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein the database is stored on a local client device associated with the individual user.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein the database is stored at a remote server and merged with other execution priority databases obtained from other users, thereby resulting in a centralized execution priority database.

12. The method of claim 11 further comprising determining a common execution priority database based on a statistical analysis of the centralized execution priority database.

13. The method of claim 12 further comprising distributing the common execution priority database to one or more local devices, thereby providing an initial execution priority database for the local devices.

14. A system for prioritizing the execution of processes by a computer, the system comprising:

a monitoring module for programmatically monitoring user-specific computer application usage patterns;

a prioritization module for assigning execution priorities for at least a subset of the computer applications based on the user-specific computer application usage patterns; and

a data storage module for storing identities of the computer applications and the execution priorities.

15. The system of claim 14 wherein the prioritization module allocates one or more computing resources to the computer applications based on the assigned priorities.

16. The system of claim 14 wherein the monitoring module, prioritization module and data storage module reside on the computer.

17. A centralized application-performance management system, the system comprising:

a communications server for receiving a plurality of locally-compiled database, each database comprising identities of the computer applications and execution priorities associated therewith, wherein the identities of the computer applications and execution priorities are based at least in part on user-specific computer application usage patterns on the respective local machines;

an aggregation module for aggregating the locally-compiled databases; and

a central data storage module for storing the aggregated locally-compiled databases.

18. The application-performance management system of claim 17 further comprising an analysis engine for analyzing the aggregated databases to determine application usage patterns among the local machines.

19. The application-performance management system of claim 18 wherein the analysis engine compiles a model application usage priority database based at least in part on the analysis of the aggregated databases.

20. The application-performance management system of claim 19 wherein the communication server distributes the model application usage priority database to one or more local machines.