Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Eric Frank Nelson

James A Schwartz, Jr

James George Cavalaris

Adam Joseph Lenart

David J Roth

Chad R Siefert

Cameron S Brodeur

Bruce John Sherwin, Jr

Jeremy Paul Cahill

Sunil K Muthuswamy

A firmware update system is described that collectively handles firmware updates for hardware resources of a computing device. The firmware update system may be configured to handle firmware updates in a consistent manner across different computing platforms/architectures. A data structure is defined to associate each updateable resource with a corresponding identifier to enumerate the updateable resources to the firmware update system. The firmware update system may reference the data structure to produce representations of the each individual resource that provide an operating system level abstraction through which detection, analysis, acquisition, deployment, installation, and tracking of firmware updates is managed. Using the representations, the firmware update system operates to discover available firmware updates collectively for the enumerated resources, match the updates to appropriate resources, and initiate installation of the updates.

Firmware update discovery and distribution

Firmware update system

Resource data structures for firmware updates

A system and method for detecting and handling errors in a computer system are disclosed. The invention is configurable to permit selecting of timelength or time out values, assigned interrupts to be generated and error recover procedures so that failures of system events can be promptly detected and recovered from. The watchdog timer is started with a timelength or time out value and generates an interrupt (i.e., is triggered) if the period of time set as the timelength passes without receiving a reset. The watchdog timer interface interacts and controls the hardware based timer to obtain this watchdog timer functionality. The hardware based timer is generally a high precision timer that exists in hardware architecture for a computer system and is usable by system software. The watchdog timer interface controls and sets various parameters and/or registers of the hardware based timer in order to provide the desired functionality of a watchdog timer. Thus, another software component can call and interact with the watchdog timer interface for a system event and view the watchdog timer interface as a watchdog timer (i.e., the operation of the hardware based timer is transparent).

Watchdog timer using a high precision event timer

The present invention facilitates access to timers in a computing device. In particular, a timer system facilitates configuring a hardware interrupt timer in a computing device, the timer being guaranteed to expire at a specific time in a non-real-time environment. A calling application passes parameters to a hardware independent application programming interface (API) to the hardware interrupt timer. The hardware independent API validates the parameters and relays them to a hardware dependent API. The hardware dependent API establishes a connection with the timer in accordance with the validated parameters, and executes a service routine associated with the application upon expiration of the timer.

Method and system for configuring a timer

Growing community of inventors

Woodinville, WA, United States of America

Eric Frank Nelson