Centralized User Experience Manager for Power and Thermal Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
Managing power consumption and thermal conditions across multiple subsystems in electronic devices is inefficient due to the use of separate decentralized control loops, leading to suboptimal performance and user experience.
Innovation Solution
A centralized user experience manager is implemented to monitor and control various subsystems, identifying user contexts and performing thermal and power mitigation operations while minimizing impact on current use cases, by adjusting thermal and power mitigation knobs and restricting subsystems to balance performance and power consumption.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If separate decentralized control loops are used to manage power consumption of each subsystem, then each subsystem can be controlled independently, but the overall power management efficiency deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple decentralized control loops into a single centralized user experience manager that coordinates power management across all subsystems. This unified manager receives assertions from subsystems and makes holistic decisions about power allocation, thermal management, and performance tuning, thereby improving overall efficiency while maintaining adaptability to different use cases.
Solution Approach 2:
The centralized user experience manager serves multiple functions simultaneously: it manages power consumption, controls thermal conditions, adjusts performance parameters, and coordinates across different subsystems. This multi-functional approach eliminates the need for separate control loops while maintaining the ability to respond to diverse subsystem needs.
2Temperature
If thermal mitigation operations are performed to reduce temperature, then thermal issues are addressed, but the impact on current use case performance increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically adjusts thermal mitigation strategies based on the current use case and temperature conditions. The user experience manager evaluates the impact of potential thermal mitigation actions on active applications and selects the least disruptive options, or delays mitigation until temperature thresholds are exceeded, thereby maintaining performance while managing thermal issues.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes operational parameters of subsystems (such as clock frequencies, frame rates, or processing intensities) to adjust thermal output. By carefully selecting and ordering parameter changes based on their thermal impact and performance consequences, the system achieves temperature control with minimal impact on user experience.
3Use of energy by moving object
If subsystem restrictions are applied to reduce power consumption, then battery life is extended, but user experience quality deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary analysis of use cases and predicts power consumption patterns before applying restrictions. By understanding the context ahead of time, the user experience manager can proactively adjust power allocation in a way that maintains user experience quality, rather than applying blind restrictions that would degrade performance.
Solution Approach 2:
The centralized manager continuously monitors subsystem assertions and user experience indicators, using this feedback to adjust power restrictions dynamically. When restrictions begin to impact user experience negatively, the system receives feedback and modifies its approach, thereby extending battery life while preserving quality of user interactions.
Data Source
AI summary
An electronic device may include software and hardware subsystems that are centrally controlled by a user experience manager. The user experience manager can identify a current user context and enforce a corresponding power and performance policy for the various subsystems that is optimized for the current user context. The user experience manager can provide a set of restrictions at the launch of a user experience, can allow the various subsystems to vary their dynamic behavior based on current operating conditions as long as the dynamic adjustments do not violate the restrictions, and can perform a series of thermal mitigation operations as the internal temperature of the electronic device varies. The centralized user experience manager can also be configured to predict a user context based on monitored states of the subsystems and monitored application usage on the electronic device.