APPLICATION-SPECIFIC POWER MANAGEMENT

• US 20120110360A1
• Filed: 10/27/2010
• Published: 05/03/2012
• 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
• Granted Patent: US 8,635,475 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 713/324
• 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 more applications that are used on a computing device;

determining, for each application of the one or more applications, a distribution of time intervals between interactions;

establishing, by a processor of the computing device, a power-down interval for each application based on the distribution for the corresponding 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.

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

each 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.

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

6. A method comprising:

establishing, by a processor, a particular power-down interval corresponding to a particular application;

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; and

in response to the detecting, initiating, by the processor, power conservation for at least one component.

7. The method according to claim 6, wherein:

the at least one component is a display; and

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

8. The method according to claim 6, 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 a user for interaction with the particular application.

9. The method according to claim 6, wherein the establishing a particular power-down interval corresponding to a particular application further comprises:

establishing a separate power-down interval for each application of a plurality of applications available for use on a computing device; and

establishing each separate power-down interval for each application based on detected user interaction with the application.

10. The method according to claim 9, further comprising, prior to establishing the separate power-down interval for each application of the plurality of applications, collecting user interaction information for each application to determine an initial power-down interval for each application, the user interaction information including a plurality of time intervals, each time interval representing a time period between detected user interaction with one of the applications.

11. The method according to claim 10, further comprising determining the initial power-down interval based the user interaction information and on a confidence value that represents a probability that the component will not be powered-down while a user is using the computing device.

12. The method according to claim 6, further comprising:

receiving feedback in response to initiating the power conservation; and

increasing a length of time of the power-down interval.

13. The method according to claim 12, 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.

14. The method according to claim 6, further comprising, when no feedback is received in response to initiating the power conservation, decreasing a length of time of the power-down interval.

15. Computer-readable storage media containing processor-executable instructions to be executed by a processor for carrying out the method according to claim 6.

16. 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, each time interval representing 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 each of the applications for establishing a power-down interval for each application.

17. The computing device according to claim 16, 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.

18. The computing device according to claim 17, 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.

19. The computing device according to claim 18, wherein the modeling component is configured to consider historic user interaction with the particular application when adjusting the power-down interval for the particular application.

20. The computing device according to claim 17, a list of the applications and corresponding power-down intervals provided to the control component, wherein the list includes an option for a user to manually enter a power-down interval for at least one of the applications of the plurality of applications.