Detailed Action
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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim(s) 1-11, 15-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chen [20120136498], in view of Lee [20050055587]
As to claim 1,
Chen [20120136498] teaches An apparatus comprising: an interface and a network interface device coupled to the interface and comprising circuitry to: control power utilization by a first set of one or more devices of a system that includes the first set of one or more devices[0027: “the management network switch 130 is used to provide a management network for connecting the processor 110 with each of the servers S11-Snm. The peripheral control interface 150 connects the cooling modules F11-Fnm and the power supply device 170 to the processor 110 ”], wherein the system is communicatively coupled to the network interface and control cooling applied to the first set of one or more devices [0027: “the power supply device 170 provides a dynamic power, and the processor 110 controls the cooling modules F11-Fnm through the peripheral control interface 150 based on the temperature information ” and 0028: “The processor 110 looks up in the comparison table of the temperature and the fan rotation speed based on the obtained temperature information to obtain a fan rotation speed value, and the processor 110 adjusts a rotation speed of the fans F11-Fnm through the peripheral control interface 150 based on the fan rotation speed value. ” and 0030: “the processor 110 can dynamically turn on or off the power supply modules P11-Pnm based on the total power consumption of the servers S11-Snm to meet requirements for energy saving. ”].
But, Chen does not explicitly teach: control power utilization by a first set of one or more devices based on power available to a system
However, Lee [20050055587] teaches control power utilization by a first set of one or more devices based on power available to a system [0019: “the control module 10 runs the power consumption estimation procedure 102 to estimate whether the power consumption of the control box 1 has exceeded the total available power thereof after finishing the power on process. If yes, the control module 10 stops the addition of any new hardware immediately, stops a subsequent process, and issues a warning about insufficient power to the manager's computer. As such, the manager can perform an action immediately for continuing the operation of the control box 1 when the manager is aware of the warning. The action is that, for example, add the number of the power supply 12 or the backup power supply 13 for increasing the total available power or disable one or more blade servers 11 of the same type or different types for decreasing power consumption to a level below the total available power”]
It would have been obvious to person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teaching of Chen and Lee because both are directed toward controlling power. Furthermore, Lee improves upon Chen by being able to control power based on the available power such that necessary/critical devices can be run even when there is enough power for all system is not available for critical task processing.
As to claim2,
Chen teaches 2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the system comprises a rack of servers, wherein at least one of the servers comprises the system [0024: “the rack server system includes a plurality of servers S11-Snm, a plurality of cooling modules F11-Fnm, a power supply device 170, and a monitoring management module 100. Each of the servers S11-Snm includes a sensor 160 for providing to temperature information of each of the servers S11-Snm”].
As to claim 3,
Chen teaches the system comprises a data center of servers, wherein at least one of the servers comprises the system [0010: “a rack server system, which includes a plurality of servers, a plurality of cooling modules, a power supply device, and a monitoring management module. Each of the servers includes a sensor so that the sensor can provide temperature information of each of the servers. ”].
As to claim 4,
Chen teaches 4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the circuitry is to communicate with second circuitry to manage power and applied cooling to a second set of more of more devices based on the power available to the system and wherein the second circuitry comprises a validated power manager [0011: “a plurality of power supply modules, wherein each of the power supply modules is used to provide a constant power. The monitoring management module is communicatively connected with the servers and the cooling modules. ” and furthermore, Lee teaches 0019: “the control module 10 runs the power consumption estimation procedure 102 to estimate whether the power consumption of the control box 1 has exceeded the total available power thereof after finishing the power on process. If yes, the control module 10 stops the addition of any new hardware immediately, stops a subsequent process, and issues a warning about insufficient power to the manager's computer. As such, the manager can perform an action immediately for continuing the operation of the control box 1 when the manager is aware of the warning. The action is that, for example, add the number of the power supply 12 or the backup power supply 13 for increasing the total available power or disable one or more blade servers 11 of the same type or different types for decreasing power consumption to a level below the total available power. ”- It would have been obvious to combine Chen and lee to provide power to each set of servers based on available power as in claim 1 for controlling each server based on needs].
As to claim 5,
Chen teaches 5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the first set of one or more devices comprises one or more of: a central processing unit (CPU), graphics processing unit (GPU), memory device, storage device, accelerator, or application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) [ 0015; “The processor and each of the servers are connected to the remote monitoring apparatus through the system network. ” and see 0026. Its inherent that each server has processor].
As to claim 6,
Chen teaches 6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the circuitry is to allocate a workload to the first set of one or more devices and control power utilization by the first set of one or more devices based on a quality of service (QoS) associated with the workload [0027: “The processor 110 decides to turn on some of the power supply modules P11-Pnm through the peripheral control interface based on a total power consumption of the servers S11-Snm , so that the power supply device 170 provides a dynamic power, and the processor 110 controls the cooling modules F11-Fnm through the peripheral control interface 150 based on the temperature information ”- power consumption is based on load of the device and dynamic is based on load and also the quality of performance of the system.] .
As to claim 7,
Chen teaches the network interface device comprises second circuitry and one or more devices, the second circuitry is to determine physical ambient information of the network interface device and adjust power usage of the one or more devices based on the physical ambient information of the network interface device [0027: “The processor 110 obtains power consumption from each of the servers and obtains the temperature information from the sensor 160 of each of the servers S11-Snm through the management network. ” and 0027: “the power supply device 170 provides a dynamic power, and the processor 110 controls the cooling modules F11-Fnm through the peripheral control interface 150 based on the temperature information ”].
As to claim 8,
Chen teaches the physical ambient information of the network interface device comprises one or more of: airflow rate, air flow direction, orientation, adjacent slot occupancy, or ambient noise levels [ 0028: “The processor 110 looks up in the comparison table of the temperature and the fan rotation speed based on the obtained temperature information to obtain a fan rotation speed value, and the processor 110 adjusts a rotation speed of the fans F11-Fnm through the peripheral control interface 150 based on the fan rotation speed value. ”- fans ration provides rate of air flow].
As to claim 9,
Chen teaches the network interface device comprises one or more of: a network interface controller (NIC), a remote direct memory access (RDMA)-enabled NIC, SmartNIC, router, switch, forwarding element, infrastructure processing unit (IPU), or data processing unit (DPU) [0026: “the peripheral control interface 150 can adopt a technology such as RS232, RS485, LAN, IPMI, I2C or PMBus. However, these are not intended to limit the present invention, and people skilled in the art can selectively adopt an appropriate processing apparatus or appropriate technology according to actual demands without departing from the spirit or scope of the present invention.” And 0027: “the management network switch 130 is used to provide a management network for connecting the processor 110 with each of the servers S11-Snm.”].
As to claim 10,
Chen teaches: a server comprising the first set of one or more devices, wherein the server is communicatively coupled to the interface [0027: “The processor 110 obtains power consumption from each of the servers and obtains the temperature information from the sensor 160 of each of the servers S11-Snm through the management network. The processor 110 decides to turn on some of the power supply modules P11-Pnm through the peripheral control interface based on a total power consumption of the servers S11-Snm”].
As to claim 11,
Lee teaches a data center, wherein the data center comprises the server and a second server, the second server comprises a second set of more of more devices, and the circuitry is to manage power and applied cooling to the second set of more of more devices based on the power available to the system [0015: “the control module 10 further runs the power consumption estimation procedure 102 to estimate whether a total available power of the power supply 12 and the backup power supply 13 is sufficient for the power on process. If it is sufficient, continue a subsequent power on process. Otherwise, a warning about insufficient power for power on is issued to inform the manager of the control box 1 and stop the subsequent power on process.”]
As to claim 15,
Combination of Chen and Lee teaches this claim according to the reasoning set forth in claim 1 supra.
As to claim 16-20,
Combination of Chen and Lee teaches this claim according to the reasoning set forth in claim 4-8 supra.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 12 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102 (a) (1) as being anticipated by Chen [20120136498]
As to claim 12,
Chen teaches 12. A non-transitory computer-readable medium, comprising instructions stored thereon, that if executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to: access a temperature profile of a device [0028: “the monitoring management module 100 further includes a memory 120 which is used to store a comparison table of a temperature and a fan rotation speed ”]; determine power consumption of multiple portions of the device that cause the device exhibit temperatures consistent with the temperature profile[0016: “remote monitoring apparatus is communicatively connected with the processor through the system network to obtain and display the temperature information and the power consumption of each of the servers ” and 0028: “The processor 110 looks up in the comparison table of the temperature and the fan rotation speed based on the obtained temperature information to obtain a fan rotation speed value, and the processor 110 adjusts a rotation speed of the fans F11-Fnm through the peripheral control interface 150 based on the fan rotation speed value. ” and 0025: “each of the power supply modules P11-Pnm is used to provide a constant power (for example, each of the power supply modules can supply a power of 500 W). The monitoring management module 100 is used to uniformly control the cooling modules F11-Fnm based on the temperature information ”- when cooling module is control is controlled based on temperature information, it controls keeps the temperature consistent to its value, also see 011, where dynamic power is power supply is provided to cooling modules based on temperature which means temperature is controlled and claim 4: “the processor controls the rotation speed of the fans based on the fan rotation speed value so that the rotation speed of the fans is not lower than the fan rotation speed value ” – all the perimeter including temperature is kept consistent that’s why the fans speed has specific rotation rate]; and generate data comprising the power consumption of multiple portions of the device [0016: “remote monitoring apparatus is communicatively connected with the processor through the system network to obtain and display …. the power consumption of each of the servers”].
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 13-14 objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
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/KESHAB R PANDEY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2176