Indicating critical battery status in mobile devices

摘要

An integrated circuit such as a SoC may indicate the critical battery status without powering-on a substantial portion including the host processing cores. The SoC may include a microcontroller, which may cause the critical battery status data to be stored in a static memory and the display unit may retrieve such data from the static memory to display a visual symbol on the screen. The other portions of the SoC such as the dynamic memory, system agent, media processors, and memory controller hubs may be powered-down while the critical battery status is displayed in the visual form on the screen.

主权项

1. An integrated circuit, comprising:
a power control unit to generate a status indicator if the charge on a battery decreases to a critical battery charge level, a controller to include, a power indication logic to, detect the occurrence of the status indicator, generate a request to power-on a first portion of the integrated circuit, wherein the request includes an identifier of the blocks in the first portion, send a request to power-on the first portion in response to detecting the status indicator, cause the critical battery status data stored in a memory to be transferred to a static memory, and wherein the controller is a processor configured to execute code that causes:
a display driver to write configuration values into one or more configuration registers in response to receiving a signal from the power indication logic;a display controller to,
determine that the critical battery status data is to be retrieved from the static memory based on the configuration values, retrieve the critical battery status data from the static memory, and render the critical battery status data in a visual form on a display, wherein the first portion to include the static memory and the display controller.