Apparatus for reducing accesses to levels of a storage hierarchy in a computing system

1. An information processing system comprising:

first and second levels of a non-volatile storage hierarchy, wherein accessing information in the first level consumes more energy than accessing information in the second level; and

a processor configured for writing information to the second level of storage based on energy-conserving criteria, wherein the energy-conserving criteria comprise system state information, and wherein said system state information is selected from a type of energy source powering the system.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the energy-conserving criteria comprise criteria compiled using a heuristic approach.

3. The system of claim 1 further comprising a storage input/output subsystem and wherein system state information comprises whether the storage input/output subsystem is using one or more specific files.

4. The system of claim 3 wherein the system state information is further selected from a group consisting of:

storage input/output data associated with one or more predetermined software applications;

a sequence of storage input/output operations; and

observed interactions with the first level of the non-volatile storage hierarchy and wherein the collection of heuristics infer a state of the second level of the non-volatile storage hierarchy.

5. The system of claim 4 wherein the system stores current user profiles and the system state information comprises whether storage input/output data are associated with a current user profile.

6. The system of claim 4 wherein the system stores current user preferences and the system state information comprises whether storage input/output data are associated with current user preferences.

7. The system of claim 3 wherein the system state information comprises at least one factor from among the following factors:

storage input/output data associated with characteristics of a connection between the first and second levels of the non-volatile storage hierarchy;

the storage input/output data associated with characteristics of a connection between the system and at least one second level of the storage hierarchy;

a proximity of the storage input/output data to events that change the state of the at least one first level of the non-volatile storage hierarchy;

the proximity of the storage input/output data to a previous interaction with at least one first level of the non-volatile storage hierarchy;

an indication of a hard-disk drive spin-down event; and

physical characteristics of the second level of the non-volatile storage hierarchy.

8. The system of claim 1 wherein the energy-conserving criteria comprise limiting use of parts of a file system.

9. The system of claim 1 wherein the system state information comprises physical characteristics of the second level of the non-volatile storage hierarchy.

10. The system of claim 1 wherein the second level of the non-volatile storage hierarchy is implemented using Flash memory.

11. The system of claim 1 wherein the system state information comprises the number of remaining write cycles.

12. The system of claim 1 wherein the processor is for removing information from the second level of the non-volatile storage based on energy-conserving criteria.

13. The system of claim 1 wherein the second level of the non-volatile storage further comprises: a mapping schema between cache files in the second level of the non-volatile storage and disk files in the first level of the non-volatile storage, wherein each cache file is named with a logical cluster number of its corresponding disk file.

14. The system of claim 1 , further comprising:

a hard disk drive, the hard disk drive comprising rotating magnetic media comprising the first level of the non-volatile storage and a cache comprising the second level of the non-volatile storage; and

an application-specific integrated circuit for managing the cache according to the energy-conserving criteria.

15. A method for managing storage of information in an information processing system comprising two levels of non-volatile storage wherein a first level is managed and a second level is unmanaged wherein storing information in managed storage consumes less energy than storing information in unmanaged storage, the method comprising:

monitoring the information processing system to determine whether an operating state of said information processing system satisfies one or more energy-conserving criteria;

storing only strategically selected storage data in managed storage when the operating state of the information processing system satisfies the one or more energy-conserving criteria; and

storing all storage data in unmanaged non-volatile storage when the operating state of the information processing system does not satisfy the one or more energy-conserving criteria;

wherein the energy-conserving criteria comprise system state information, and wherein said system state information is selected from a type of energy source powering the system.

16. A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising program instructions for:

monitoring a system to determine whether an operating state of the system satisfies one or more energy-conserving criteria;

storing only strategically selected storage data in managed non-volatile storage when the operating state of the system satisfies the one or more energy-conserving criteria; and

storing all storage data in non-managed non-volatile storage when the operating state of the system does not satisfy the one or more energy-conserving criteria;

wherein the energy-conserving criteria comprise system state information, and wherein said system state information is selected from a type of energy source powering the system.