Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
DETAILED ACTION
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
2. 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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 4/16/2026 has been entered. Claims 1, 8, 9, 16, and 17 have been amended. Claims 1-20 remain pending in the application.
Response to Arguments
3. Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims have been considered but are moot in view of new ground of rejection. See rejections below for details.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
4. 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.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
5. Claims 1, 3, and 8-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Santaus et al. (U.S. Patent Application Pub. No. US 20230409940 A1).
Claim 1: Santaus teaches a method, comprising:
analyzing a quantum environment to determine one or more physical properties of the quantum environment, the one or more physical properties comprising at least one of: a number of qubits, a type of the qubits, or a spin of the qubits (i.e. FIG. 3 discloses aspects of distributing quantum jobs or slicing a quantum processing unit into portions or partitions. FIG. 3 illustrates a quantum processing unit 324 associated with n qubits. The n qubits are illustrated as groups of qubits in this example: qubit group 312 and qubit group 314. The number of qubits each of the qubit groups 312 and 314 can vary and may depend on the quantum jobs being performed by the quantum processing unit 324. The number of qubit groups may vary and may depend on the number of quantum jobs being performed simultaneously. The number of qubits in any group is determined by the qubits required by the corresponding quantum job; para. [0019, 0050]);
analyzing a quantum program to determine one or more requirements of the quantum program (i.e. The quantum job 202 may include information or artifacts such as a quantum circuit 204, number of shots 206, and number of qubits 208 … The number of qubits in any group is determined by the qubits required by the corresponding quantum job; para. [0017, 0019]);
generating, by a processing device, a first quantum isolation zone in view of the one or more physical properties and the one or more requirements, the first quantum isolation zone having same physical properties as the quantum environment (i.e. FIG. 3 discloses aspects of distributing quantum jobs or slicing a quantum processing unit into portions or partitions. FIG. 3 illustrates a quantum processing unit 324 associated with n qubits. The n qubits are illustrated as groups of qubits in this example: qubit group 312 and qubit group 314. The number of qubits each of the qubit groups 312 and 314 can vary and may depend on the quantum jobs being performed by the quantum processing unit 324. The number of qubit groups may vary and may depend on the number of quantum jobs being performed simultaneously. The number of qubits in any group is determined by the qubits required by the corresponding quantum job; para. [0019]);
allocating a first group of qubits to the first quantum isolation zone (i.e. The n qubits are illustrated as groups of qubits in this example: qubit group 312 and qubit group 314 … Thus, the job 308 is assigned to the qubit group 312 and the job 306 is assigned to the qubit group 314; para. [0019, 0027, 0045]);
running the quantum program within the first quantum isolation zone using the first group of qubits (i.e. the distribution engine 322 determines that the job 306 and the job 308 can be performed concurrently on the quantum processing unit 324. Thus, the job 308 is assigned to the qubit group 312 and the job 306 is assigned to the qubit group 314. The two jobs 306 and 308 are executed according to the job with the higher number of shots; para. [0017, 0027]);
generating a second quantum isolation zone in view of the one or more physical properties and the one or more requirements (i.e. FIG. 3 discloses aspects of distributing quantum jobs or slicing a quantum processing unit into portions or partitions. FIG. 3 illustrates a quantum processing unit 324 associated with n qubits. The n qubits are illustrated as groups of qubits in this example: qubit group 312 and qubit group 314. The number of qubits each of the qubit groups 312 and 314 can vary and may depend on the quantum jobs being performed by the quantum processing unit 324. The number of qubit groups may vary and may depend on the number of quantum jobs being performed simultaneously. The number of qubits in any group is determined by the qubits required by the corresponding quantum job; para. [0019, 0044]); and
allocating a second group of qubits to the second quantum isolation zone (i.e. FIG. 3 discloses aspects of distributing quantum jobs or slicing a quantum processing unit into portions or partitions. FIG. 3 illustrates a quantum processing unit 324 associated with n qubits. The n qubits are illustrated as groups of qubits in this example: qubit group 312 and qubit group 314. The number of qubits each of the qubit groups 312 and 314 can vary and may depend on the quantum jobs being performed by the quantum processing unit 324. The number of qubit groups may vary and may depend on the number of quantum jobs being performed simultaneously. The number of qubits in any group is determined by the qubits required by the corresponding quantum job; para. [0019, 0044]), wherein the second group does not overlap with the first group (i.e. wherein the first quantum job is assigned a first group of qubits of the quantum processing unit including qubits 1 to x and wherein the second quantum job is assigned a second group of qubits including qubits from qubit x+1 to qubit x+y; para. [0045]).
Claim 3: Santaus teaches the method of claim 1. Santaus further teaches wherein the one or more requirements of the quantum program includes at least one of: a number of one or more required qubits, a qubit spin requirement, a qubit polarization requirement, a gate circuit requirement, a type of qubit requirement, an error correction software, a heat threshold, a heat profile, a noise tolerance, or a required service (i.e. The number of qubits in any group is determined by the qubits required by the corresponding quantum job; para. [0015, 0019]).
Claim 8: Santaus teaches the method of claim 1. Santaus further teaches comprising: running the quantum program within the second quantum isolation zone (i.e. Executing the jobs 306 and 308 concurrently results in an output 316 from the quantum processing unit 324. The output 316 may include a bitstring distribution for all qubits of the quantum processing unit 324 (group 312 and group 314) that were used; para. [0012, 0028]).
Claim 9 is similar in scope to Claim 1 and is rejected under a similar rationale.
Santaus teaches a system comprising: a memory (i.e. memory; para. [0064]); and a processing device operatively coupled to the memory (i.e. A computer may include a processor and computer storage media carrying instructions that, when executed by the processor and/or caused to be executed by the processor, perform any one or more of the methods disclosed herein; para. [0055]).
Claims 10-16 are similar in scope to Claims 2-8 and are rejected under a similar rationale.
Claim 17 is similar in scope to Claim 1 and is rejected under a similar rationale.
Santaus teaches a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium including instructions that, when executed by a processing device, cause the processing device to (i.e. A non-transitory storage medium having stored therein instructions that are executable by one or more hardware processors to perform operations comprising the operations of any one or more of embodiments; para. [0054]).
Claims 18-20 are similar in scope to Claims 2-4 and are rejected under a similar rationale.
Claim Rejections – 35 USC § 103
6. 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 of this title, 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.
7. Claim 2 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Santaus in view of Griffin et al. (U.S. Patent Application Pub. No. US 20200125402 A1).
Claim 2: Santaus teaches the method of claim 1. Santaus further teaches wherein analyzing the quantum program includes the quantum program to determine the one or more requirements of the quantum program (i.e. FIG. 3 discloses aspects of distributing quantum jobs or slicing a quantum processing unit into portions or partitions. FIG. 3 illustrates a quantum processing unit 324 associated with n qubits. The n qubits are illustrated as groups of qubits in this example: qubit group 312 and qubit group 314. The number of qubits each of the qubit groups 312 and 314 can vary and may depend on the quantum jobs being performed by the quantum processing unit 324. The number of qubit groups may vary and may depend on the number of quantum jobs being performed simultaneously. The number of qubits in any group is determined by the qubits required by the corresponding quantum job; para. [0019]).
Santaus does not explicitly teach parsing one or more quantum assembly language files.
However, Griffin teaches wherein analyzing the quantum program includes parsing one or more quantum assembly language files of the quantum program to determine the one or more requirements of the quantum program (i.e. The processing device may parse each line of the QASM file and identify, from the request, a statement starting with an annotation (e.g., “#@”) indicating an execution environment requirement …file 400 may include an instruction 419 defining a qubit size (e.g., a number of qubits) be used to implement the algorithm; para. [0045, 0055, 0059]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Santaus to include the feature of Griffin. One would have been motivated to make this modification because it improves efficiency and reliability of quantum job execution.
8. Claim 4 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Santaus in view of Rigetti et al. (U.S. Patent Application Pub. No. US 20220084085 A1).
Claim 4: Santaus teaches the method of claim 1. Santaus does not explicitly teach wherein the quantum environment comprises a qubit registry, and the method further comprises updating the qubit registry based on allocation of qubits to the quantum isolation zone.
However, Rigetti teaches wherein the quantum environment comprises a qubit registry (i.e. A plaquette analysis module 205 tracks the properties of available QPU plaquettes over time (across recalibrations of the QPU). A QPU characteristics database 210 stores the quality metrics of each qubit and gate on each QPU; para. [0088, 0095]), and the method further comprises updating the qubit registry based on allocation of qubits to the quantum isolation zone (i.e. The resource, auctioning and scheduling subsystem 206 provides the following functions: matches orders to available resources and their usage/access schedule (order book job schedule 207); determines the pricing of plaquettes; accepts or rejects orders submitted by users; manages temporal access control to QPU resources (access control 209); and handles the bookkeeping of consumed epochs on resources (update bookkeeping 208). A usage database 204 stores the record of consumed epochs on plaquettes for each user along with the corresponding price; para. [0086, 0088, 0095, 0105, 0107]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Santaus to include the feature of Rigetti. One would have been motivated to make this modification because it enables consistent application of the correct hardware metadata and preventing using already-allocated resources.
9. Claim 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Santaus in view of Javadiabhari et al. (U.S. Patent Application Pub. No. US 20200285986 A1).
Claim 5: Santaus teaches the method of claim 1. Santaus does not explicitly teach in response to the running of the quantum program satisfying one or more criteria, deploying the quantum program to the quantum environment.
However, Javadiabhari teaches in response to the running of the quantum program satisfying one or more criteria (i.e. receiving a quantum algorithm and simulating the quantum algorithm, the quantum algorithm forming a set of quantum gates … in response to determining the simulated quantum circuit satisfies a subset of the set of quantum gate acceptability criteria and a second subset of the set of qubit acceptability criteria, application 402 transforms the quantum algorithm into quantum circuit 420; para. [0020, 0082]), deploying the quantum program to the quantum environment (i.e. application 402 transforms the quantum algorithm into quantum circuit 420, quantum circuit 420 performing the operations of the quantum algorithm. Application 402 outputs validation ticket 422 and notifies the user of validation; para. [0082]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Santaus to include the feature of Javadiabhari. One would have been motivated to make this modification because it improves the scheduling and allocation process by ensuring that the quantum job is compatible with the available qubits and QPU execution conditions before consuming QPU resources.
10. Claims 6 and 7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Santaus in view of Javadiabhari, and further in view of Rigetti.
Claim 6: Santaus and Javadiabhari teach the method of claim 5. Santaus does not explicitly teach wherein deploying the quantum program to the quantum environment includes exporting a configuration of the quantum isolation zone to the quantum environment and exporting the quantum program to run in the quantum environment, which includes at least one of: the one or more properties of the quantum environment, or the one or more requirements of the quantum program.
However, Javadiabhari further teaches wherein deploying the quantum program to the quantum environment includes the quantum environment (i.e. In response to determining the simulated quantum circuit satisfies a subset of the set of quantum gate acceptability criteria and a second subset of the set of qubit acceptability criteria, application 402 transforms the quantum algorithm into quantum circuit 420, quantum circuit 420 performing the operations of the quantum algorithm; para. [0082]) and exporting the quantum program to run in the quantum environment (i.e. In response to determining the simulated quantum circuit satisfies a subset of the set of quantum gate acceptability criteria and a second subset of the set of qubit acceptability criteria, application 402 transforms the quantum algorithm into quantum circuit 420, quantum circuit 420 performing the operations of the quantum algorithm. Application 402 outputs validation ticket 422 and notifies the user of validation; para. [0082]), which includes at least one of: the one or more properties of the quantum environment, or the one or more requirements of the quantum program (i.e. the quantum circuit compilation application determines a set of qubit parameters for a set of qubits on a quantum processor. In the embodiment, the quantum circuit compilation application determines a set of quantum logic gate parameters for the set of quantum logic gates. In the embodiment, the quantum circuit compilation application determines a set of quantum circuit parameters for the quantum circuit; para. [0037]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Santaus to include the feature of Javadiabhari. One would have been motivated to make this modification because it improves the scheduling and allocation process by ensuring that the quantum job is compatible with the available qubits and QPU execution conditions before consuming QPU resources.
However, Rigetti teaches wherein deploying the quantum program to the quantum environment includes exporting a configuration of the quantum isolation zone to the quantum environment (i.e. These parcels may comprise configurations of qubits and qubit-qubit links on one or more quantum processor units for use by users for running computer programs … a plaquette is a configuration of qubits and qubit-qubit links on one or more quantum processor units; para. [0028, 0030]) and exporting the quantum program to run in the quantum environment (i.e. Finally, the user can then run their application on a quantum virtual machine, quantum simulator, (using classical compute resources in the HPUs or in dedicated classical compute hardware), and when desired, seamlessly migrate the application to real qubits; para. [0153, 0155]), which includes at least one of: the one or more properties of the quantum environment, or the one or more requirements of the quantum program (i.e. When deploying, various metrics need to be specified: how many QPUs to use (perhaps to parallelize the algorithm); how many interconnected qubits are needed in the lattice for the algorithm to run on; and what classical compute resources are needed (CPU cores, GPU cores, memory space, etc); para. [0150]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify the combination of Santaus and Javadiabhari to include the feature of Rigetti. One would have been motivated to make this modification because it enables consistent application of the correct hardware metadata and preventing using already-allocated resources.
Claim 7: Santaus, Javadiabhari, and Rigetti teach the method of claim 6. Santaus does not explicitly teach wherein the quantum program is not deployed to the quantum environment in response to the quantum program not satisfying the one or more criteria.
However, Javadiabhari further teaches wherein the quantum program is not deployed to the quantum environment (i.e. In response to determining the simulated quantum circuit satisfies a subset of the set of quantum gate acceptability criteria and a second subset of the set of qubit acceptability criteria, application 402 transforms the quantum algorithm into quantum circuit 420, quantum circuit 420 performing the operations of the quantum algorithm. Application 402 outputs validation ticket 422 and notifies the user of validation. Validation ticket 422 corresponds to a place in a queue of quantum algorithms for a quantum processor executing validated quantum algorithms; para. [0082]) in response to the quantum program not satisfying the one or more criteria (i.e. application 105 determines whether at least one of the parameters meets an acceptability criterion. In response to determining the at least one parameter fails to meet an acceptability criterion (NO path of block 510), application 105 moves to block 516 to notify the user of parameter failure. Application 105 ends process 500 thereafter; para. [0084]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify the combination of Santaus and Rigetti to include the feature of Javadiabhari. One would have been motivated to make this modification because it improves the scheduling and allocation process by ensuring that the quantum job is compatible with the available qubits and QPU execution conditions before consuming QPU resources.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure.
Smith (Pub. No. US 20210132969 A1), quantum operations can be simulated on a classical processing system using a quantum virtual machine (QVM). The QVM receives a quantum virtual state including a virtual wavefunction of n qubits.
It is noted that any citation to specific pages, columns, lines, or figures in the prior art references and any interpretation of the references should not be considered to be limiting in any way. A reference is relevant for all it contains and may be relied upon for all that it would have reasonably suggested to one having ordinary skill in the art. In re Heck, 699 F.2d 1331, 1332-33, 216 U.S.P.Q. 1038, 1039 (Fed. Cir. 1983) (quoting In re Lemelson, 397 F.2d 1006, 1009, 158 U.S.P.Q. 275, 277 (C.C.P.A. 1968)).
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/TAN H TRAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2141
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