Electrical computers and digital processing systems: support – Computer power control – Power conservation
Reexamination Certificate
2001-05-04
2002-06-18
Wong, Peter S. (Department: 2181)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: support
Computer power control
Power conservation
Reexamination Certificate
active
06408396
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to an electronics system, and more particularly, relates to a computer system having a mechanism for supporting wake-on voice and wake-on MIC technology.
BACKGROUND
Computer systems typically incorporate some form of power saving and power management techniques to reduce power consumed by the computer systems, particularly portable or notebook computers powered by a battery in order to maximize available battery usage time.
One example such power saving and power management techniques is provided in the Advanced Power Management (APM) specification jointly developed by Intel Corporation and Microsoft Corporation in February 1996. The APM algorithm is implemented by basic input-output system (BIOS) instructions stored in read-only memory (ROM) to provide various power saving functions, and manage the progress of power saving between full-on, standby, and sleep mode. The sleep mode is the level of least power consumption, which interrupts power supplies directed to microprocessor, display apparatus, hard disk drives, floppy disk drives, and other subsystems. The only power supplied is that which can restore the system to the full-on state. Further, the sleep mode may urge the system to enter into full power-off state, if the power management system adopts a suspend-to-disk utility to save the contents of the main memory and the system information to a reserved space on the hard disk.
A later power management specification, the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) specification, version 1.0B, jointly developed by Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Toshiba Corp. in February 1999, is further implemented to enhance power management functionality and robustness, facilitate and accelerate industry-wide implementation of power management, and create a robust interface for configuring motherboard devices. The ACPI specification includes tables, BIOS, and hardware registers. ACPI tables are used to describe system information (e.g., supported power states, power sources, clock sources), features (e.g., available hardware devices), and methods for controlling those features (e.g., ACPI control methods). ACPI BIOS is that part of the computer system firmware that implements the ACPI specified interfaces for sleep, wake-up from sleeping, some restart operations, and provides permanent storage of ACPI table information. ACPI registers are used to store and pass event information between the hardware/firmware and an ACPI driver—an operating system (OS) level program that coordinates all transitions between active and inactive (sleeping) states.
Under the APM specification and the ACPI specification, computer systems may be set to a sleep mode after a period of inactivity to save power and may then be awaken (i.e., resumed normal operation) in response to wake events. However, such computer systems are limited to wake events from manual input devices such as keyboards, pointing devices and mice, and in some special circumstances, remote wake events from remote devices via modems or network interface cards (NICs).
For those users who may be suffering from mobility disadvantages, blindness etc., known wake events from manual input devices or from remote devices via modems or NICs may not be effective and useful. An additional wake event such as a wake-on voice option or wake-on MIC technology is more desirable. However, current computer systems do not support any type of wake-on voice or wake-on MIC technology in which computer systems are awaken from a sleep mode via voice input via a MIC interface.
Accordingly, there is a need for a circuit design that allows a user to conveniently wake the computer system from a sleep mode via voice input via a MIC interface.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5689715 (1997-11-01), Crump et al.
patent: 5765001 (1998-06-01), Clark et al.
patent: 5983186 (1999-11-01), Miyazawa et al.
patent: 6012029 (2000-01-01), Cirino et al.
Chung-Trans X.
Intel Corporation
Wong Peter S.
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