Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Texas Instruments Corporation

Bharath Siravara

Justin Mann

Martin Regen

Stephane Karoubi

Li Xu

Sudeesh Reddy Pingili

Ray Brown

Thomas W Holcomb

Sanjeev Mehrotra

Serge Smirnov

Walid Ali

Kishore Arvind Kotteri

Bruce Lin

Hui Gao

Shankar Lakshmi Regunathan

Steven Craig Bartling

David R Anderson

Charles M Branch

Guo-Wei Shieh

Mark H Krueger

Ce Wang

Neil A Brench

Arthur William James Freeman

Joerg Raymond Brown

Marc Edward Royer

Peter Zuo

Pedro R Galabert

Neeraj Mogotra

Samil D Kamath

Mobile computing device power consumption can be reduced by using expiration window timers, state-based timers and/or the coordination of keep-alive timers. A mobile computing device can execute tasks associated with multiple keep-alive timers used for maintaining communication links between the device and cloud-based service providers in a single active state. A cloud-based keep-alive service can maintain mobile computing device-service provider communication links by sending one keep-alive communication to a mobile computing device in place of multiple communications. Upon receiving a response, the keep-alive surface can send a plurality of keep-alive communications to a plurality of cloud-based service providers.

Power management via coordination and selective operation of timer-related tasks

A method of coordinating tasks of a mobile computing device may include initializing a timer associated with one or more tasks and a state condition. The state condition may depend on a device state of the mobile computing device and/or a component state of a mobile computing device component. An expiration of the timer is detected. Upon detecting the expiration, a determination is made whether the state condition is satisfied based on whether the mobile computing device is in the device state and/or the mobile computing device component is in the component state. Based at least in part on the determination that the state condition is satisfied, performance of the one or more tasks associated with the timer can be initiated.

An indexed file layout, comprising index information, is defined for segmented streaming of multimedia content. The index information can comprise program description information and streaming segment index information. In addition, the layout can comprise files containing streaming segments of the program, where the streaming segments are each encoded at one or more bitrates independently of other streaming segments of the program. The layout supports client switching between different bitrates at segment boundaries. Optimized client-side rate control of streaming content can be provided by defining a plurality of states, selecting available paths based on constraint conditions, and selecting a best path through the states (e.g., based on a distortion measure). In one client-side rate control solution states correspond to a specific bitrate of a specific streaming segment, and in another client-side rate control solution states correspond to a measure of client buffer fullness.

Optimized client side rate control and indexed file layout for streaming media

Architecture for enhancing the compression (e.g., luma, chroma) of a video signal and improving the perceptual quality of the video compression schemes. The architecture operates to reshape the normal multimodal energy distribution of the input video signal to a new energy distribution. In the context of luma, the algorithm maps the black and white (or contrast) information of a picture to a new energy distribution. For example, the contrast can be enhanced in the middle range of the luma spectrum, thereby improving the contrast between a light foreground object and a dark background. At the same time, the algorithm reduces the bit-rate requirements at a particular quantization step size. The algorithm can be utilized also in post-processing to improve the quality of decoded video.

Entropy coding efficiency enhancement utilizing energy distribution remapping

Mobile computing device power consumption can be reduced by using expiration window timers, state-based timers and/or the coordination of keep-alive timers. Upon detecting a trigger event causing a mobile computing device to transition from a low-power state to an active state, the device can determine whether the trigger event occurs within the expiration window of a timer, and execute tasks associated with the trigger event and the timer. Tasks associated with state-based timers can be executed if the mobile computing device or a component thereof is in (or, alternatively, not in) a specified state. A mobile computing device can execute tasks associated with multiple keep-alive timers used for maintaining communication links between the device and cloud-based service providers in a single active state. A cloud-based keep-alive service can maintain mobile computing device-service provider communication links by sending one keep-alive communication to a mobile computing device in place of multiple communications.

Various embodiments enable a device to create a pool of at least one empty application. An empty application can be configured to contain resources that are common across one or more other applications and initialize the resources for the one or more other applications effective to reduce startup time of the other applications. In one or more embodiments, an empty application can further be populated with the one or more other applications effective to cause the one or more other applications to execute. Alternately or additionally, a device can be monitored for an idle state, and, upon determining the device is in the idle state, at least one empty application can be created.

Process pool of empty application hosts to improve user perceived launch time of applications

Architecture that employs texture sensitive temporal filtering to reuse motion estimation information in a realtime encoder. The temporal filter is applied for classified static areas. The architecture reuses the motion estimation results on motion vectors, cost estimates (e.g., sum of absolute difference (SAD)), and edge awareness texture information to apply the temporal filter on the current picture. Filtering can be applied at the pixel level, block level or macroblock level.

Texture sensitive temporal filter based on motion estimation

A method of encoding an input video stream comprising a video component and an audio component is disclosed. The input video stream is split into a plurality of segments, each comprising a plurality of frames. Each of the segments is encoded as a low bit rate layer, a high bit rate layer, and one or more intermediate bit rate layers. The bit rate of the low bit rate layer is selected such that a network streaming the segment will always be able to stream the segment encoded as the low bit rate layer. The bit rate of the high bit rate layer is selected such that the segment is able to be decoded and played back at or above a quality threshold. The bit rates of the intermediate bit rate layers are produced by applying a bit rate factor to another bit rate.

Encoding streaming media as a high bit rate layer, a low bit rate layer, and one or more intermediate bit rate layers

A system architecture including a co-processor and a memory switch resource is disclosed. The memory switch includes multiple memory blocks and switch circuitry for selectably coupling processing units of the co-processor, and also a bus slave circuit coupled to a system bus of the system, to selected ones of the memory blocks. The memory switch may be constructed as an array of multiplexers, controlled by control logic of the memory switch in response to the contents of a control register. The various processing units of the co-processor are each able to directly access one of the memory blocks, as controlled by the switch circuitry. Following processing of a block of data by one of the processing units, the memory switch associates the memory blocks with other functional units, thus moving data from one functional unit to another without requiring reading and rewriting of the data.

Pipelined access by FFT and filter units in co-processor and system bus slave to memory blocks via switch coupling based on control register content

Growing community of inventors

Issaquah, WA, United States of America

Bharath Siravara