Intel Corporation

Saranya Gopal

Rajaram Regupathy

Reuven Rozic

Peter Ewert

Vrukesh V Panse

Vincent J Zimmer

Abdul Rahman Ismail

Subrata Banik

Dmitriy Berchanskiy

Paul D Crutcher

Khaled Almahallawy

Nirmala Bailur

Gaurav Singh

Purushotam Kumar

Abhilash K V

Vns Murthy Sristi

Tomer Savariego

Oren Novitzky

Buses such as USB4 or Thunderbolt 4 buses may allow for device combinations that actually cannot be accommodated on the bus. A monitoring component, e.g., software and/or hardware component, such as an Operating System (OS) policy manager, may monitor a bus for events identifying changes to devices on the bus. The monitoring component may influence mode changes to hardware/software, such as to the USB configuration, device driver settings, attached device settings, and/or settings for devices attaching to the bus. Influenced changes facilitate accommodating changes to the devices attached to the bus. For example, if a display is attached and it would exceed available bus bandwidth, cause an excess system load, or cause some other problem, rather than fail to enumerate the display, instead hardware and/or software associated with the bus may be influenced to result in a resolution reduction for the display to accommodate it attaching to the bus.

Dynamically influencing bandwidth

Universal Serial Bus (USB) Power Delivery is augmented by allowing devices that attach to the USB to include and/or have access to an enhanced device policy manager (eDPM) so that device information such as status, state, or requirements, such as power requirements, may be at least be shared by the eDPMs between, for example, a host device on the bus, a secondary device providing power to devices on the bus, and a new device attaching to the bus. Sharing device information facilitates the host having contextual awareness for the attaching device and assists with determining whether the attaching device may be enumerated on the bus. If not, such as due to insufficient power available from the secondary device, the host and/or secondary device may seek to influence bus devices to change an operating mode to accommodate the attaching device.

Peer-influenced enhanced USB power delivery

A data scaling module for USB4 that embodies display driver (DD) and connection manager (CM) operations. Periodic and aperiodic transfer requests are monitored. The periodic BW activity on periodic peripherals, such as display panels (DPs) is monitored, and determinations as to reduced periodic activity on a DP are made. Responsive to receiving a high aperiodic bandwidth request, the original refresh rate for the DP is reduced. The newly freed USB4 BW is provided for the aperiodic task. At completion of the aperiodic task, the DD increases the refresh rate to its original value.

Apparatus and methods for universal serial bus 4 (USB4) data bandwidth scaling

A scheme to enhance USB-C port policy by dynamically entering optimal USB-C alternate mode with an informed feedback mechanism to OSPM which influences the USB-C port DPM. In some embodiments, when a USB4 device is connected to a port, the scheme parses the alternate modes and power characteristics from the class descriptor information of the enumerated device. In some embodiments, the parsed information is provided as a feedback to the OSPM that instructs the USB-C/PD DPM to enter or switch mode that shall meet the policy criteria of the OS configuration in a dynamic command control from the OS. In some embodiments, the USB-C DPM dynamically chooses to enter an optimal mode based on the power and thermal conditions information available in the embedded controller and indicate the OS about the changes. As such, the OS is aware of the USB operation mode.

Dynamic USB-C mode selection OSPM policy method and apparatus

Embodiments are directed to a phased boot process to dynamically initialize devices in a verified environment. An embodiment of a system includes a memory device to store platform initialization firmware to cause the processing system to: initialize, during a boot process, a portion of the one or more memory modules as system management random access memory (SMRAM) for system management mode (SMM) usage; generate an SMM component in the SMRAM, the SMM component comprising an SMM handler routine to handle dynamic intellectual property (IP) management operations corresponding to the plurality of hardware components; register the SMM handler routine with an SMM interrupt (SMI) for identification of SMM events from an operating system (OS); and generate an SMM dispatcher in the SMRAM, the SMM dispatcher to create an instance of the SMM handler routine in the SMRAM in response to receiving an SMI from the OS during runtime of the processing system.

Phased boot process to dynamically initialize devices in a verified environment

In embodiments, at least one computer-readable medium (CRM) includes a plurality of instructions to cause a computing device, in response to execution of the instructions, to operate a power manager to: receive a request from a first operating system (OS) of a virtualized execution environment (VEE) of the computing device to suspend a first input/output (I/O) device of the computing device. The computing device has a plurality of I/O ports for receiving a plurality of I/O devices including the first I/O device. The plurality of I/O ports are virtualized for a plurality of OSes of the VEE, including the first OS. In response to the receipt, the power manager conditionally suspends the first I/O device if no other guest OS of the VEE is using the first I/O device. Other embodiments are also described and claimed.

Power management method and apparatus for virtualized I/O devices

Growing community of inventors

Bengaluru, India

Saranya Gopal