Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Nimrod Ben Simhon

Nir Nice

Michael Feldman

Ayelet Kroskin

Noam Koenigstein

Oren Barkan

Gal Lavee

Paul Nogues

Shimon Shlevich

Tal Zaccai

Shay Ben Elazar

Yehiel Berezin

The disclosed distributed task coordination ensures task execution while minimizing both the risk of duplicate execution and resources consumed for coordination. Execution is guaranteed, while only best efforts are used to avoid duplication. Example solutions include requesting, by a node, a first lease from a first set of nodes; based at least on obtaining at least one first lease, requesting, by the node, a second lease from a second set of nodes; based at least on the node obtaining at least one second lease, determining a majority holder of second leases; and based at least on obtaining the majority of second leases, executing, by the node, a task associated with the at least one second lease. In some examples, the nodes comprise online processing units (NPUs). In some examples, if a first node begins executing the task and fails, another node automatically takes over to ensure completion.

Multi-phase distributed task coordination

Systems and methods are provided for optimizing data storage and improving the speed of data retrieval in a data store, such as a storage server connected to a large network through the use of bucketing techniques to create efficient data structures for storing received key-value datasets at one or more storage servers. Fast key-value read requests and key-value retrievals may be accomplished through the use of multiphase lookup operations on the one or more storage servers. The system is optimized for best performance of retrieval through the separation of the write and read mechanisms. Systems and methods provided herein control the level of wastefulness on the back end of a system and reduce read operation inefficiencies on the front end of a system.

Optimized data storage for fast retrieval

A playlist generator that utilizes multiple data sources to rank each track within a set of candidate tracks to enable selection of candidate tracks according to the ranking. Candidate tracks are each scored according to one or more features, such as acoustic similarity and/or similar usage patterns of the candidate track or artist of the candidate track to a current or previously played track or artist. Each feature is weighted according to historical listening patterns surrounding a user-selected playlist seed artist. The weighting may also be further corrected according to historical listening patterns of the particular user. When historical usage data related to a particular seed artist is limited, more generalized historical usage data related to a higher level in a genre hierarchy may be used.

Hierarchical multisource playlist generation

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Netanya, Israel

Nimrod Ben Simhon