Application State Suspension and Resume Mechanism
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
In multitask processing environments, suspending and resuming application programs is challenging due to potential resource conflicts and loss of work state information, leading to usability issues and malfunctions.
Innovation Solution
An information processing device that stores and resumes the execution state of an application program by using a resource management unit to handle identifiers and switch between volatile and nonvolatile storage, ensuring seamless resource access and state restoration.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the information processing device brings the entire system into an unusable state to suspend an application program, then the work data is protected from accidental manipulation, but the user cannot carry out other work using different applications
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the system suspension into application-level suspension. Instead of bringing the entire information processing device into an unusable state, only the specific application program is suspended while the system remains operational for other applications. This is achieved by suspending the execution of the target application program while maintaining the operational state of the system, allowing users to continue working with other applications without affecting the suspended application's work data.
2Ease of operation
If the application program continues running to maintain work state, then the work can be resumed easily, but the work data may be altered or lost due to accidental manipulation
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the application program's execution state and work data into a suspended state, separating it from the running system. By suspending the application program while preserving its execution state in memory, the work data is protected from accidental manipulation during the suspended period. When the user wants to resume work, the application program is restarted and the execution state is restored, allowing easy resumption without risking data integrity during the suspension period.
3Ease of manufacture
If the device stores only work contents as data when interrupting an application, then storage is simple, but information about displayed portion and display state is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary action by storing the complete execution state of the application program, which includes not only work contents but also display state information and other runtime parameters. This comprehensive state capture is done before interruption, ensuring that when the application is resumed, all information including displayed portion and display state is automatically restored without requiring additional storage operations or user intervention to recreate the display state.
4Ease of operation
If the application program uses the same handle to identify a resource upon resumption in multitask environment, then resource access is simplified, but access conflict may occur causing malfunction
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces the operating system as an intermediary between the resuming application program and the system resources. When an application program is resumed in a multitask environment, the operating system intercepts resource access requests and manages the allocation of handles. The OS ensures that resource access is granted only when appropriate, preventing access conflicts by coordinating between multiple applications and maintaining system stability while allowing simplified resource access through the handle mechanism.
Data Source
AI summary
An information processing device is configure so as to store an image that is to be retained in a main memory so that a processor can execute an application program, and after execution of the application program is terminated, execute the application program from a state at a time when the image is stored by reading out the stored image to the main memory.