Hitachi Solutions, Ltd.

Hitachi, Ltd.

Nobuyuki Ohama

Yuichi Nakamura

Masato Utsumi

Yasuhiro Kirihata

Masao Tsuyuzaki

Yasuhiro Kawai

Shingo Izumi

Jyunpei Ogawa

Itsuya Nishikawa

Syuuichi Yoshida

An electric power demand adjustment program management apparatus, comprises a server which includes: a communication unit that communicates with a plurality of customer terminals that manage customer devices through a communication network; a program unit that creates an electric power demand adjustment program showing a demand adjustment amount allocated to at least one first customer terminal selected from the plurality of customer terminals in each predetermined time segment, based on predetermined constraint conditions and predetermined information received from the plurality of customer terminals; a program executing unit that transmits the electric power demand adjustment program, and instructs the first customer terminal to execute the electric power demand adjustment program; and a providing unit that provides, when the program unit fails to create the electric power demand adjustment program, investigation result information including an investigation result for a cause of the failure.

Electric power demand adjustment program management apparatus and electric power demand adjustment program management method

The present invention provides a firmware update process capable of realizing both recovery from an interruption of update and saving of a capacity of nonvolatile memory used for backup and storing difference data. Thus, intermediate data is included for always holding a status of firmware in rewriting in addition to the new and old firmware. In a case of updating all blocks configuring the firmware in an arbitrary order, the process successively compares blocks of the intermediate data and new firmware with each other; calculates an address of data for recovery from an interruption of update and a backup capacity required therefor; extracts difference data to be distributed, calculates a capacity thereof and creates an update procedure; and derives a processing order whose total of the backup capacity and the difference data capacity is the minimum (see FIG.).

Firmware update system and information apparatus, and program

The firmware update apparatus is configured so that data required for update is accessible from both of normal firmware and emergency firmware and is provided with a section which sets the next-time boot destination to the emergency firmware during update, a section which saves a file before update into an area originally occupied by an update file, a section which inspects that a file required for booting the normal firmware is not broken or confirms that activation is actually possible from a virtualized environment, during activation of the emergency firmware, a section which restores the state before update by the saved files before update and a new update procedure automatically generated by reversing the contents of operations of the update procedure, and a section which, for each update file, describes a necessary reactivation target in the update procedure.

Firmware update apparatus and method

The present invention provides a firmware update technique in which a work area is small, a work time is short, update can be resumed even if power-down occurs, and even a file system which does not support writing is supported. To provide the firmware updating technique, an update creating and distributing server divides old and new version firmware images, extracts a difference between the new and old divided firmware images, creates an updated package, and delivers the updated package to an embedded device. On the other hand, the embedded device applies the updated package to the old version divided firmware image (an existing firmware message currently in use).

Firmware updating system, firmware delivering server, firmware embedded device, and program

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo, Japan

Nobuyuki Ohama