Patent ID: 7809968

Claim:
A method for managing sleep modes in an electronic computing ecosystem of components, the method comprising: receiving an inactivity signal from at least one component in the ecosystem of components, the inactivity signal indicating that a predefined period of inactivity has been exceeded for that component; sending a sleep command to one or more components in the ecosystem in response to the inactivity signal, thereby establishing a sleep mode in the one or more components; subsequent to establishing the sleep mode, detecting activity in one or more of the one or more components through an awake signal received therefrom; sending an awake message to the one or more components in response to the awake signal, thereby terminating the sleep mode in the one or more components; wherein the sleep mode shuts off defined non-essential features within the one or more components, while maintaining defined essential processing tasks associated with of the one or more components placed into the sleep mode.