Methods for application management in an electronic device supporting hardware acceleration

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10101982-B2
Application number	US-201314075512-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 8, 2013
Priority date	Jan 31, 2013
Publication date	Oct 16, 2018
Grant date	Oct 16, 2018

Abstract

Methods for application management in an electronic device are provided. It is first determined whether the application to be installed is listed in a first list, wherein the first list lists a set of applications which are hardware accelerable. The application is then marked as a hardware accelerable application in response to the application being listed in the first list. Thereafter, the application is installed, wherein a hardware acceleration function of the application is enabled to activate a hardware acceleration unit of the electronic device for hardware acceleration during executing the application being marked as the hardware accelerable application.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for application management in an electronic device with a processing unit and a graphic processing unit (GPU) which is deactivated, comprising:
receiving, by the processing unit, an application to be installed;
parsing, by the processing unit, the application to detect whether a binary file of the application is using any unsupported Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) or classes, wherein the unsupported APIs or classes are a set of APIs or classes which do not support hardware acceleration;
installing, by the processing unit, the application with a first flag which marks the application as hardware accelerable by the GPU on the electronic device when none of the unsupported APIs or classes is detected in the binary file of the application; and
installing, by the processing unit, the application with a second flag which marks the application as not hardware accelerable by the GPU on the electronic device when one of the unsupported APIs or classes is detected in the binary file of the application,
wherein the first flag causes the processing unit to activate the GPU for hardware acceleration when the application with the first flag is being executed.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
prior to parsing the application to be installed, determining, by the processing unit, whether the application to be installed is listed in a first list, wherein the first list lists a set of applications which are hardware accelerable by the GPU;
installing, by the processing unit, the application with the first flag in response to the application being listed in the first list;
determining, by the processing unit, whether the application is listed in a second list in response to the application not being listed in the first list, wherein the second list lists a set of applications which are not hardware accelerable by the GPU; and
installing, by the processing unit, the application with the second flag in response to the application being listed in the second list.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the determination of whether the binary file of the application is using any unsupported APIs or classes is performed by parsing the binary file of the application with a third list using a virtual machine running on the electronic device, wherein the third list lists the set of unsupported APIs and/or classes.

4. The method of claim 2 , further comprising:
adding the application marked with the second flag in the second list in response to determining that the binary file of the application uses one of the unsupported APIs or classes; and
adding the application marked with the first flag in the first list in response to determining that the binary file of the application uses none of the unsupported APIs and classes.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the activation of the GPU enables GPU rendering.

6. An electronic device, comprising:
a storage device;
a graphic processing unit (GPU), wherein the GPU is deactivated; and
a processing circuit coupled to the storage device and the GPU,
wherein the processing circuit receives an application to be installed, parses the application to detect whether a binary file of the application is using any unsupported Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) or classes, installs the application with a first flag which marks the application as hardware accelerable by the GPU on the electronic device when none of the unsupported APIs or classes is detected in the binary file of the application and installs the application with a second flag which marks the application as not hardware accelerable by the GPU on the electronic device when one of the unsupported APIs or classes is detected in the binary file of the application,
wherein the unsupported APIs or classes are a set of APIs or classes which do not support hardware acceleration and the first flag causes the processing circuit to activate the GPU for hardware acceleration when the application with the first flag is being executed by the processing circuit.

7. The electronic device of claim 6 , wherein the storage device further stores a first list listing a set of applications which are hardware accelerable by the GPU and a second list listing a set of applications which are not hardware accelerable by the GPU, and prior to parsing the application to be installed, the processing circuit further retrieves the first list from the storage device, determines whether the application to be installed is listed in the first list, installs the application with the first flag in response to the application being listed in the first list, retrieves the second list from the storage device and determines whether the application is listed in the second list in response to the application not being listed in the first list, and installs the application with the second flag in response to the application being listed in the second list.

8. The electronic device of claim 7 , wherein the processing circuit further determines whether the binary file of the application is using any unsupported APIs or classes by parsing the binary file of the application with a third list using a virtual machine running on the electronic device, wherein the third list lists the set of unsupported APIs and/or classes.

9. The electronic device of claim 7 , wherein the processing circuit further determines to add the application marked with the second flag in the second list in response to determining that the binary file of the application uses one of the unsupported APIs or classes and to add the application marked with the first flag in the first list in response to determining that the binary file of the application uses none of the unsupported APIs and classes.

10. The electronic device of claim 9 , wherein the processing circuit further determines whether a first application to be executed is marked with the first flag, wherein the processing circuit further activates the GPU for executing the first application in response to the first application being marked with the first flag, or deactivates the GPU for executing the first application in response to the first application not being marked with the first flag.

11. The electronic device of claim 10 , wherein the processing circuit further determines to deactivate or activate the GPU when executing the first application respectively if a predetermined criteria for the electronic device has been met when the GPU is being activated or deactivated, wherein the predetermined criteria corresponds to performance of the electronic device.

12. A method for application management in an electronic device with a processing unit and a graphic processing unit (GPU) which is deactivated, comprising:
receiving, by the processing unit, an application to be executed, wherein the application has a flag;
parsing, by the processing unit, the application to detect whether a binary file of the application is using any unsupported APIs or classes, wherein the unsupported Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) or classes are a set of APIs or classes which do not support hardware acceleration by the GPU;
marking, by the processing unit, the application with a first flag which marks the application as hardware accelerable by the GPU when none of the unsupported APIs or classes is detected in the binary file of the application;
marking, by the processing unit, the application with a second flag which marks the application as not hardware accelerable by the GPU when one of the unsupported APIs or classes is detected in the binary file of the application;
executing, by the processing unit, the application with the GPU activated in response to the application b

Assignees

• Htc Corp

Inventors

• Peng Chung-Chen
• Lai Tsung-Wei
• Lee Ming-Chao
• Lin Chi-Nan
• Chou Yi-Chih
• Huang Yu-Chi
• Huang Jian-Chau
• Chen Shang-Che
• Yu Han-Kuan
• Lin Shih-Ping

Classifications

• G06F8/61 Primary

  Installation · CPC title