Management of data before zero volt suspend in computer power management

• US 7,013,397 B2
• Filed: 09/08/2003
• Issued: 03/14/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 12/16/1994
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: PDACO LIMITED
• Original Assignee: Elonex IP Holdings Limited
• Inventors: Seiler, William J., Kikinis, Dan
• Primary Examiner(s): ELAMIN, ABDELMONIEM I
• Application Number:
  US10/657,540
• Publication Number:
  US 20040054941A1
• Time in Patent Office: 918 Days
• Field of Search: 713/300, 713320-324, 713/340
• US Class Current: 713/300
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/30 Means for acting in the event of power-supply failure or interruption, e.g. power-supply fluctuations for resetting only G06F1/24
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4418 Suspend and resume; Hibernate and awake

Abstract

A power management system for computers compresses contents of system RAM and stores the contents on a non-volatile storage device before power is suspended to a motherboard, which removes power also from RAM. By compression, the capacity required of the non-volatile storage device is minimized. In a variation, zeros are stored in all RAM area used by memory management software before compression and storage on the non-volatile device. In another variation, areas of RAM used by memory management software are identified, and only those areas not used by memory management software are stored on the non-volatile device. The capability is provided in several ways in different embodiments.

Claims

1. A method for preserving selected data of a computing device entering a power suspension mode comprising:

determining whether a data element held in volatile memory of the computing device is necessary for restoration of the computing device to a pre-suspension state upon the computing device exiting the power suspension mode;

if the data element is necessary for restoration of the computing device to the pre-suspension state upon the computing device exiting the suspension mode, then selecting the data element for storage in non-volatile memory accessible to the computing device prior to entering the power suspension mode; and

storing the selected data element in the non-volatile memory accessible to the computing device prior to entering the power suspension mode.

2. The method for preserving selected data of a computing device entering a power suspension mode of claim 1, wherein determining whether a data element held in volatile memory of the computing device is necessary for restoration of the computing device to a pre-suspension state upon the computing device exiting the power suspension mode comprises:

determining if the data element is a memory management data element stored by a memory management control routine; and

if the data element is a memory management data element, then identifying the memory management data element as not necessary for restoration of the computing device to the pre-suspension state upon the computing device exiting the power suspension mode.

3. The method for preserving selected data of a computing device entering a power suspension mode of claim 2, wherein the memory management control routine is selected from group consisting of a HIMEM.SYS routine, a 386MAX routine, a QEMM routine, a fonts cache routine, and a memory scratchpad routine.

4. The method for preserving selected data of a computing device entering a power suspension mode of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises restoring the computing device to the pre-suspension state after the computing device exiting the suspension mode.

5. The method for preserving selected data of a computing device entering a power suspension mode of claim 1, wherein storing the selected data element in the non-volatile memory of the computing device prior to entering the power suspension mode comprises:

accessing a compression utility routine;

applying the compression utility routine to selected data elements comprising the selected data element to produce compressed data; and

storing the compressed data on the non-volatile memory.

6. The method for preserving selected data of a computing device entering a power suspension mode of claim 5, wherein compression routing comprises reclaiming memory areas of the volatile memory by writing zeros to the selected data elements prior to applying the compression utility routine.

7. The method for preserving selected data of a computing device entering a power suspension mode of claim 1, wherein the non-volatile memory is a hard-disk drive connected to and operable by the computer.