Patent ID: 7707586
Filing Date: 2010-04-27
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A computing platform comprising: a host processing system comprising a central processing unit to host an operating system; a communication adapter to at least one of transmit data to and receive data from a data transmission medium; a non-volatile storage; and an operating system independent agent, executable independently of the operating system and regardless of whether the operating system is running, in a reduced power state, or disabled, to control at least one of read-only and read/write access to at least a portion of the non-volatile storage device by an external process in response to requests received at the communication adapter, the external process to communicate with the computing platform through the communication adapter over the data transmission medium, the portion of the non-volatile storage device allocated to an application program instance, the agent also being to determine allocation of a reserved portion of the portion of the non-volatile storage in response to a command from the application program instance based upon whether the application program instance is associated with a partner application program vendor; wherein the agent maintains a data structure comprising a plurality of records, each record being associated with a respective application program instance and comprising information representative of a maximum sub portion allocation of the allocatable portion, the plurality of records specifying a total of sub portion allocations exceeding the allocatable portion, one or more of the plurality of records being associated with the partner application program vendor and one or more of the records being associated with a non-partner application program vendor; wherein the agent further comprises: logic to allocate a portion of the allocatable portion in response to the command from the application program instance; and logic to deny the allocation of the reserved portion of the allocatable portion in response to the command if the application program instance is not associated with the partner application program vendor.