The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 04, 2004
Filed:
Sep. 07, 2001
Erik Riedel, San Francisco, CA (US);
Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P., Houston, TX (US);
Abstract
A method of and apparatus for migrating data between storage devices for reducing power consumption. Unlike prior techniques for conserving power by spinning down a magnetic disk (e.g., in a laptop computer), the present invention migrates data based on the assumption that the disk is maintained spinning (e.g., in a server). Accordingly, the incremental power consumed by maintaining data on the disk is nominal in comparison to the amount of power required to store the data in volatile memory (e.g., RAM). Data placement is largely based on the goal of minimizing power consumption during periods when the data is not being accessed. Further, unlike conventional techniques in which data is removed from RAM only when a better candidate is available to replace the data, the present invention may move data from RAM regardless of whether replacement data is available. This is avoids consumption of power to maintain data in RAM that is idle. Thus, under certain conditions, the inventive technique for data migration in a computer system reduces power consumption in comparison to conventional algorithms.