Patent ID: 7203942

Claim:
A method of operating a terminal having at least one resource and executing at least one application in real-time, wherein the execution of the application requires execution of at least two tasks, and wherein the method comprises: selecting a task execution quality level and an associated resource utilization for each of the tasks, wherein the task execution quality level and associated resource utilization define a quality-resource utilization operating point from a predetermined set of optimal quality-resource utilization operating points; determining at least one implementation parameter for the defined quality-resource utilization operating point, wherein the determining is performed for each of the tasks, and wherein the determined implementation parameter is different from the quality and resource utilization; and executing the tasks with their determined implementation parameter, wherein the predetermined set of optimal quality-resource utilization operating points are at least a part of a set of possible quality-resource utilization operating points, wherein the optimal set has less points than the possible set, wherein the set of optimal quality-resource utilization operating points are selected such that there exists at least one possible quality and resource utilization operating point in the set of possible quality resource utilization operating points which is not a part of the set of optimal quality-resource utilization operating points, wherein the at least one possible quality and resource utilization operating point is characterized in that all points within the optimal set having a resource utilization higher than the operating point have a higher quality level, and wherein substantially all points within the optimal set having a quality level lower than the operating point have a lower resource utilization.