Patents by Inventor William T. Colburn

William T. Colburn has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 9846628
    Abstract: The present invention extends to methods, systems, and computer program products for indicating parallel operations with user-visible events. Event markers can be used to indicate an abstracted outer layer of execution as well as expose internal specifics of parallel processing systems, including systems that provide data parallelism. Event markers can be used to show a variety of execution characteristics including higher-level markers to indicate the beginning and end of an execution program (e.g., a query). Inside the execution program (query) individual fork/join operations can be indicated with sub-levels of markers to expose their operations. Additional decisions made by an execution engine, such as, for example, when elements initially yield, when queries overlap or nest, when the query is cancelled, when the query bails to sequential operation, when premature merging or re-partitioning are needed can also be exposed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 15, 2010
    Date of Patent: December 19, 2017
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Edward G. Essey, Igor Ostrovsky, Pooja Nagpal, Huseyin S. Yildiz, Hazim Shafi, William T. Colburn
  • Patent number: 9141507
    Abstract: A method of providing a visualization of states of a process includes identifying a set of potential states that can occur during the process and a corresponding set of colors, with each color in the set of colors corresponding to one of the potential states. A fixed ordering is established for the set of colors. A timeline graph including a plurality of colored vertical bars is displayed. Each colored vertical bar corresponds to a time interval of the process and includes at least one color selected from the set of colors based on at least one state occurring during the time interval corresponding to the vertical bar. The plurality of colored vertical bars includes a set of multiple-color vertical bars that each include a plurality of colors appearing in a vertical order based on the fixed ordering.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 23, 2009
    Date of Patent: September 22, 2015
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Xinhua Ji, Alexander Dadiomov, Hazim Shafi, Eric Ledoux, William T. Colburn
  • Publication number: 20110307905
    Abstract: The present invention extends to methods, systems, and computer program products for indicating parallel operations with user-visible events. Event markers can be used to indicate an abstracted outer layer of execution as well as expose internal specifics of parallel processing systems, including systems that provide data parallelism. Event markers can be used to show a variety of execution characteristics including higher-level markers to indicate the beginning and end of an execution program (e.g., a query). Inside the execution program (query) individual fork/join operations can be indicated with sub-levels of markers to expose their operations. Additional decisions made by an execution engine, such as, for example, when elements initially yield, when queries overlap or nest, when the query is cancelled, when the query bails to sequential operation, when premature merging or re-partitioning are needed can also be exposed.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 15, 2010
    Publication date: December 15, 2011
    Applicant: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Edward G. Essey, Igor Ostrovsky, Pooja Nagpal, Huseyin S. Yildiz, Hazim Shafi, William T. Colburn
  • Publication number: 20110154245
    Abstract: A method of providing a visualization of states of a process includes identifying a set of potential states that can occur during the process and a corresponding set of colors, with each color in the set of colors corresponding to one of the potential states. A fixed ordering is established for the set of colors. A timeline graph including a plurality of colored vertical bars is displayed. Each colored vertical bar corresponds to a time interval of the process and includes at least one color selected from the set of colors based on at least one state occurring during the time interval corresponding to the vertical bar. The plurality of colored vertical bars includes a set of multiple-color vertical bars that each include a plurality of colors appearing in a vertical order based on the fixed ordering.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 23, 2009
    Publication date: June 23, 2011
    Applicant: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Xinhua Ji, Alexander Dadiomov, Hazim Shafi, Eric Ledoux, William T. Colburn