Quick Resumption via Two-Stage Context Loading
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional processing systems take over 60 seconds to resume from a sleeping state, with the time increasing with the amount of memory, making the process inefficient and unproductive for users.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a method that saves the system context in two stages, allowing for quick resumption by using a resume descriptor to skip unnecessary initialization steps and load only essential data first, enabling the system to become usable within seconds.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Speed
If the system preserves complete system context in memory during sleeping state, then the system can restore processes quickly, but the power consumption increases and memory requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the system context into multiple parts: critical context (CPU registers, page tables, interrupt handlers) is preserved in volatile memory, while non-critical context (file descriptors, process control blocks) is stored on disk. This segmentation allows the system to restore quickly by loading only critical context from memory while keeping power consumption low by minimizing memory retention.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts and removes non-essential system context from the sleeping state memory retention. By identifying and excluding non-critical process data from the suspended memory state, the system reduces power consumption while maintaining the ability to restore essential processes through selective context reloading from disk storage.
2Reliability
If the system restores all system context from disk during resumption, then complete process state is recovered, but the resumption time increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides system context restoration into two phases: first, critical context (CPU state, memory mappings, interrupt handlers) is restored immediately from volatile memory to enable quick resumption; second, non-critical context (file descriptors, process control blocks) is restored asynchronously from disk. This segmentation enables the system to become functional quickly while completing full context restoration in the background.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary restoration of critical system context before the system is fully ready for operation. By pre-loading essential process state information into volatile memory during the sleeping state and restoring it first during resumption, the system achieves quick startup while maintaining complete process state recovery through subsequent background loading of non-critical data.
3Quantity of substance
If the system increases memory capacity to handle larger system context, then more processes can be suspended, but the resumption time increases due to larger data restoration
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments system context by priority levels, storing only high-priority critical context in volatile memory and low-priority non-critical context on disk. This allows the system to support multiple suspended processes with large total context size while maintaining fast resumption by loading only the essential portions from memory, with optional background loading of additional context from disk.
Data Source
AI summary
When transitioning from sleep mode to active mode, a processing system loads first stage resume content and second stage resume content into a volatile memory of the processing system. The first stage resume content may contain contextual data for a first program that was in use before the processing system transitioned to sleep mode. The second stage resume content may contain contextual data for another program that was in use before the processing system transitioned to sleep mode. The processing system may provide a user interface for the first program before all of the second stage resume content has been loaded into the volatile memory. Other embodiments are described and claimed.