Hewlett-packard Development Company, L.P.

Palm, Incorporated

James P Gustafson

Shao-Chun Chen

Toni Pakarinen

Sunil B Marolia

Bindu Rama Rao

Karl William Hammerberg

Teck Chia

Glenn Hamasaki

John D V Dinh

Jerry L Barber

Sidney Andrew Jacobi

LaShawn McGhee

Harri Okkonen

Young Hee Choi

Do P Nguyen

Rafe V Campbell

Vincent P Soberano

Disclosed herein is an electronic device network for lifecycle management of firmware and software in electronic devices. The electronic device network may also be adapted to manage configuration parameters in the electronic devices. Lifecycle management provided by the electronic device network may include firmware and software downloading, firmware and software updating, and remote locking and remote enabling of electronic device capability. An update store module in the electronic device network may be adapted to dispense update packages to requesting electronic devices. The electronic devices may employ one or a plurality of update agents to update software and firmware therein. A boot loader in the electronic device is capable of determining whether an update agent is to be invoked or whether a previous backup copy of the update agent in non-volatile memory is to be invoked upon determining, based upon status information, that an update is to be conducted, rather than a normal startup operation without updates.

Network for updating electronic devices

A network for updating firmware, drivers, or application software facilitates the access to generated update packages by electronic devices and the update of firmware, drivers, content or application software in a fault tolerant mode. A 'Bubbles' technique is employed to generate efficient and compact update packages. A 'Bubbles' information is generated employing the &#x201c;Bubbles&#x201d; technique that is subsequently sent to the electronic devices as part of an update package. The &#x201c;Bubbles&#x201d; information and other related information is used in preprocessing activities and in other update related activities. For example, they are used to prepare the electronic device for an update to a different version of its firmware, software and/or content.

Firmware update network and process employing preprocessing techniques

An electronic device network including a plurality of electronic devices. The electronic devices may each have updating software adapted to update firmware/software resident in the electronic devices. The electronic devices may also employ additional software for updating the updating software in the electronic devices. The electronic devices may also have software adapted to determine whether a current version of the updating software is to be invoked or whether a previous backup version of the updating software is to be invoked. The determination may be made based upon status information resident in a update status indicator. The status information may indicate that an update upon the updating software is to be conducted, rather than a normal startup operation without performing any updates. The network may also include an update generator adapted to generate updates for use in updating the updating software in the electronic devices.

Tri-phase boot process in electronic devices

Disclosed herein is an electronic device having a non-volatile memory including a plurality of memory sections. Each of the plurality of memory sections may be managed by a remote management server and an associated service and may participate in a mobile services network. The non-volatile memory may include manufacturer related content and data, such as firmware and an operating system. The non-volatile memory may also include operator related data and content, such as communication stacks for bearer communications. The non-volatile memory may also include corporation related data and content, such as confidential corporate information and software. The non-volatile memory may also include end user related data and content, such as gaming software and address book information. Each of the memory sections in the non-volatile memory may be managed by a different remote management server.

Management of service components installed in an electronic device in a mobile services network

There are two different types of compression used on the Embedded Linux Platform that the present invention is targeting. For the kernel, a singular compression is used. A whole kernel is compressed into a single compressed zImage by zlib at once. When the kernel is loaded into RAM, the whole kernel has to be decompressed to RAM and executes there. The root file system is built through the CramFS that employs a different compression mechanism. It is a block-based compression. When the device is running, it is not necessary to load the whole file system to RAM. The kernel mounts the file system and performs the decompression on a file when it is needed.

Updatable mobile handset based on Linux with compression and decompression techniques

A network with mobile devices supports update of firmware and/or software from one version to another version, the firmware or software being stored in non-volatile memory of the mobile handset, such as a NAND flash memory. In one embodiment, a firmware stored in the NAND non-volatile memory is updated by an update agent in a fault tolerant mode.

NAND mobile devices capable of updating firmware or software in a manner analogous to NOR mobile devices

A mobile handset in a mobile services network, with access to a plurality of services including a firmware/software update service, is also capable of updating its update agent using an appropriate update package. The update package is retrieved from an update package repository via a management server. In one embodiment, the existing update agent is copied to a backup section before the update agent itself is updated. On the subsequent reboot, the new update agent is employed unless it is determined that it is corrupted or ineffective, in which case the old update agent is reactivated.

Mobile handset capable of updating its update agent

A mobile handset with a fault tolerant update agent employs an efficient interruption point detection technique to recover from interruptions during the update of firmware or software. In one embodiment, the update agent updates firmware and/or software employing a plurality of transforms, each transform employing one pass or a subset of one pass to execute, each pass associated with its own bank order and with its own decision maker bank (for recovery following a fault, such as power failure). The devices and method disclosed are applicable to other electronic devices such as, for example, personal digital assistants (PDAs), personal computers (PCs), pagers, and the like.

Mobile handset with efficient interruption point detection during a multiple-pass update process

A linker profiler tool facilitates maintenance and management of object ordering between releases of firmware. By maintaining object ordering, code differences between firmware builds are reduced, which reduces the size of a package of update information used to update an electronic device from one version of firmware to another. Information used by an object code linker in a firmware build activity is processed to minimize changes in code object ordering between builds. The impact on the size of the update information caused by updates to firmware/software component in the build is thereby reduced to a minimum.

Transparent linker profiler tool with profile database

A mobile electronic device with NOR and/or NAND flash memory may be updated using an update agent able to perform fault tolerant updates. The efficiency of an update of the memory of the device may be significantly improved by employing memory management information provided by a generator used to produce update information for updating the memory. Erasures and writes to blocks of flash memory may be reduced by mapping a logical block layout to a physical block layout that helps avoid moves of memory blocks to be updated. Fault tolerance of the update process is maintained.

Mobile device with a MMU for faster firmware updates in a wireless network

Disclosed herein is a mobile services network including an electronic device with an update agent that may be capable of updating firmware and application software stored in non-volatile memory and employing multiple FLASH memory chips. The update agent may employ an update package generated to update firmware/software data segments and code segments. In an embodiment according to the present invention, the update agent may also employ a flash library supporting multiple FLASH memory chips from the same or different manufacturers. In an embodiment according to the present invention, the FLASH memory chips may be grouped. The update agent may also be capable of updating code in the multiple FLASH memory chips in the non-volatile memory of the electronic device.

Update system capable of updating software across multiple FLASH chips

A multiple variance platform supports device management of mobile devices in a carrier network. Applications stored in a file system residing in non-volatile memory may be updated, along with firmware code. Updates of files may be performed before file system support is provided by an operating system that enables normal operations of the electronic device. Update agent code may reside in a kernel that runs beneath the operating system, or may act as a separate entity. The non-volatile memory may comprise multiple non-volatile memory chips such as NAND-based flash memory. The firmware code may be compressed as in Linux based mobile devices.

Multiple variance platform for the management of mobile devices

A mobile handset in a mobile services network, with access to a plurality of services, including a firmware/software update service, receives update notifications. The notifications indicate the availability of update packages, and, in response, the mobile handset confirms the authenticity of the received update notifications before initiating a download of an associated update package from a management server or delivery server in the mobile services network. The notifications may be managed and sent by an authorized user from a management console. One or more delivery servers may be employed to dispense update packages to a plurality of mobile handsets.

Mobile services network for update of firmware/software in mobile handsets

A system for generating efficient and compact update packages makes it possible to process a source binary image of software/firmware for an electronic device and a target binary image in order to generate a compact update package. It generates bubbles information that is optionally packaged with the generated update package. Together, the bubbles information and the update package, when delivered to an electronic device, facilitate the upgrade of the electronic device to a new or different version. The system for generating efficient and compact update packages selectively employs residue generation/computation and entropy computation, in addition to other techniques, in order to make the update package more compact.

System for generating efficient and compact update packages

Disclosed herein is an electronic device capable of providing efficient fault-tolerance update processes by employing a backup memory block used in conjunction with a block-by-block update process, wherein the backup memory block may be employed to store backup content computed using updated contents of a first memory block and contents of unmodified second memory block. The first and second memory blocks may be recoverable following a fault by computations using the content of the backup memory block. Fault-tolerant recovery processes according to an embodiment of the present invention apply the contents of the backup memory block to efficiently recover from faults occurring during update of one of firmware and software in an electronic device.

Growing community of inventors

Irvine, CA, United States of America

James P Gustafson