Hewlett-packard Development Company, L.p.

Wishfi Pte. Ltd

Shao-Chun Chen

James P Gustafson

Patrick O'Neill

Sidney Andrew Jacobi

Peter L Sotos

Bindu Rama Rao

Sunil B Marolia

Jeong Yeon Lim

Toni Pakarinen

Giovanni Motta

Patrick C Lilley

Jerry L Barber

Marko Slyz

LaShawn McGhee

Jeong Mook Lim

Karl William Hammerberg

Iyad Qumei

Harri Okkonen

Do P Nguyen

Young Hee Choi

Kunlin Chen

A system and method to effectively and efficiently update a version of firmware resident in a device memory is provided. A method of identifying one or more versions of firmware is provided by way of initializing a device memory with a known pattern. In addition, the amount of free unused memory space may be identified and calculated in a device memory. The system and method generates software update packages that are minimal in size providing cost benefit to a manufacturer and convenience to a user.

Initialization and update of software and/or firmware in electronic devices

A generator for generating an update package for efficiently updating the software and/or firmware in an electronic device, and a method for operating such a generator are disclosed. An embodiment of the disclosed invention may produce a compact update package comprising a set of instructions that may be executed within the electronic device to produce an updated binary image of the software and/or firmware. Pre-processing of the existing or new binary image may result in a further reduction in the size of the update package, shortening the time needed to transmit the update package to the electronic device.

Pattern detection preprocessor in an electronic device update generation system

A method and system for associating one or more contents with an electronic page. The method includes receiving a request for the electronic page from a user. The method further includes processing the request in a predefined manner. Thereafter, the method includes selecting one or more contents in response to processing the request. Further, the method includes rendering one or more contents along with the electronic page in a predetermined format.

Method and system for associating one or more contents with an electronic page

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 that is retrieved from an update package repository via a management server. A generator with nodes preprocessor is used to create an update package and associated information, such as nodes information and filter information, by comparing two different versions of the firmware/software of the mobile handset.

Mobile handset update package generator that employs nodes technique

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

A mobile device with a self-backup mechanism may conduct an implicit backup of update agent code during an update of firmware in the electronic device, using a package of update information. Another embodiment may perform an explicit backup of update agent code before the update of other firmware is performed. In an electronic device employing NAND flash non-volatile memory for firmware storage, a boot code may copy all firmware, including update agent code, from the non-volatile memory to RAM for execution. A determination may be made whether a backup copy of update agent code exists, and the existing update agent code may be updated by a copy of the update agent code stored in an area in RAM. An updated update agent code may be capable of employing update status data used by old update agent code, as well as update status data used by an updated update agent code.

Mobile device with a self-updating update agent in a wireless network

An efficient generator for update packages employs one of two possible schemes to perform preprocessing when an ELF file or other similar information is not available. The first technique embeds the preprocessing in the generator loop and does not rely on the knowledge of the architecture. The second technique, called node list technique, needs to know the syntax of the assembly instructions used by the executable.

Efficient generator of update packages for mobile devices that uses non-ELF preprocessing

Disclosed herein is an electronic device network including a plurality of electronic devices. The electronic devices may each have update agents capable of selectively decompressing compressed code and/or compressed data segments. The update agents may also be adapted to employ the decompressed code and data segments in conjunction with additional update information to update the firmware and/or software, compressed or otherwise, resident in the electronic devices. An update generator may be adapted to employ compression and decompression techniques to extract compressed code and data segments from a plurality of memory images stored in the electronic devices. The update generator may also be adapted to process the extracted information and generate update packages using the decompressed code and data segments and the additional update information. The update generator may also be adapted to selectively compress the update information in generated update packages usable for updating the electronic devices.

Electronic device network supporting compression and decompression in electronic devices

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 fault tolerant method of updating software and firmware in non-volatile memory in electronic devices such as, for example, cellular phones, personal digital assistants, pagers and the like, which supports efficient recovery of corrupted memory contents when interruption of updating activities occurs, and that minimizes writes to the non-volatile memory.

Mobile handset employing efficient backup and recovery of blocks during update

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 build optimization tool analyzes builds of software/firmware to determine the ordering of code objects in first and second code versions for an electronic client device such as a cellular phone, personal digital assistant, or pager. The build optimization tool produces information for use by a software linker to link the code objects of the second code version in a more optimal order for the production of updating information used in the electronic client device for updating the software/firmware of the electronic client device.

Growing community of inventors

Aliso Viejo, CA, United States of America

Shao-Chun Chen