Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
1. A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on March 24th, 2026 has been entered.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
2. Claims 1-28 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Regarding the independent claims, the claims have been amended to recite “wherein row information of a value within the index matrix indicates a row of a non-zero value of the compressed matrix within the sparse matrix”. This limitation is considered indefinite as it appears to contradict the earlier limitations of, for example, claim 1, which recites that there are “two or more matrices of data comprising a sparse matrix…[and] a compressed matrix of non-zero values”. This differs from the limitations later in the independent claims which states that the compressed matrix is “within” the sparse matrix. It is therefore unclear whether these compressed and sparse matrices are entirely different, one is contained within another, or are a compressed and uncompressed version of the same matrix. Therefore, the metes and bounds of the independent claims are unclear and the claims are rejected as being indefinite.
Claims 2-8, 10-16, 18-22, and 24-28 are rejected for their dependence upon the independent claims without resolving the grounds of rejection for the claims upon which they depend.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
He (US 2021/0271736) discloses a processor for generating an index matrix of a location of non-zero values.
Hsieh (US 2019/0012296) discloses a processor that compresses values of a weight matrix and shifts entries in a matrix by vector multiplication operation according to an index matrix.
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/MICHAEL J METZGER/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2183
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