DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
This action is in response to communications filed on 10/29/2025.
Claims 1-20 remain pending. Claims 1-20 have been examined and are rejected.
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 10/29/2025 has been entered.
Priority
This application was filed 11/4/2022.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments filed in the communications above have been fully considered but are moot because the arguments do not apply to the combination of references being used in the current rejection.
For at least these reasons, applicant’s arguments are considered not persuasive.
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 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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1-5, 7, 9, 11, & 13-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Haghighat et al. (US 2021/0263779 A1) in view of Lee et al. (US 2019/0163521 A1) in view of Wang (CN 113132171 B).
With regard to Claim 1, Haghighat teaches:
A device, comprising: (a function as a service (FaaS) architecture 600 comprising features 618 in a VMM 616 (virtual machine monitor, e.g., hypervisor) that implement hardware performance monitoring counters and software event counters [Haghighat: 0177; 0194; Figs. 6A & 7A], wherein each function (or each tenant) may be assigned an RMID, and new CPU hardware may be built or enabled to track RMID time on the CPU [Haghighat: 0649]);
one or more receiving circuits to receive a request to assign a network device from a first container to a second container; (generate function requests to invoke a function, and determine whether the function should be sent (i.e. assigned) to a warm container or to a new cold container [Haghighat: 0416-17; 0260], wherein the functions comprise a network, storage, and memory manager 408 that enable the use of single-root IO virtualization (SR-IOV) in a FaaS architecture [Haghighat: 0160; 0179]);
wherein the network device is associated with one or more of a counter and a statistic; and one or more response circuits to, in response to the request: reset the one or more of the counter and the statistic associated with the network device; and after resetting the one or more of the counter and the statistic associated with the network device, reassign the counter to a new tenant; (tracking resource utilization using a resource monitoring identifier (RMID) or Process address space IDs (PASID), and clearing the counters on demand prior to reassigning and recycling a PASID or RMID for a new tenant [Haghighat: 0656; 0659-62; Fig. 23]).
However, Haghighat does not explicitly teach:
receive a request to reassign a network device from a first container to a second container;
assign the network device to the second container;
In a similar field of endeavor involving I/O virtualization, Lee discloses:
receive a request to reassign a network device from a first container to a second container; (the destination computing host transmits a request message to the management host to reassign a first VF from a source VM to a destination VM [Lee: 0056]);
assign the network device to the second container; (the management host reassigns a first VF corresponding to the source VF in the management host to the destination VM according to the request message [Lee: 0056]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Haghighat in view of Lee in order to reassign a network device from a first container to a second container in response to a request in the system of Haghighat.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine with Lee as doing so would allow physical hardware to be shared as VFs with multiple virtual machines and enable movement of the shared resources between VMs as desired.
However, Haghighat-Lee does not explicitly teach:
set the one or more of the counter and the statistic associated with the network device to zero.
In a similar field of endeavor involving maintaining packet statistics for a network device, Wang discloses:
setting values associated with each of the one or more of the counter and the statistic to zero; (the network device may set the first statistical number to an initial value by resetting its recorded current statistical number of received packets to zero [Wang: p. 15]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Haghighat-Lee in view of Wang in order to set the statistics to zero in the system of Haghighat-Lee.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine Haghighat-Lee with Wang as doing so would allow the number of packets received by a new tenant to be easily determined by referencing the relevant number.
With regard to Claim 2, Haghighat-Lee-Wang teaches:
The device of claim 1, wherein the network device is associated with a physical function; (the SR-IOV technology allows a physical host (e.g. computer host) to assign multiple virtual functions (VF) to different virtual machines (VM) [Lee: 0004]).
With regard to Claim 3, Haghighat-Lee-Wang teaches:
The device of claim 1, wherein the network device is associated with a virtual function; (the SR-IOV technology allows a physical host (e.g. computer host) to assign multiple virtual functions (VF) to different virtual machines (VM) [Lee: 0004]).
With regard to Claim 4, Haghighat-Lee-Wang teaches:
The device of claim 1, wherein the network device is associated with one or more of a scalable function, a subfunction, and an SIOV device; (function as a service (FaaS) system 2700 may include a memory 2710 which may be shared by two or more sub-functions [Haghighat: 0723], wherein PASIDS may be assigned to each core and used with other features like Scalable I/O Virtualization (SIOV) [Haghighat: 0650]).
With regard to Claim 5, Haghighat-Lee-Wang teaches:
The device of claim 1, wherein the device is comprised by a network interface controller; (the FaaS server configuration 300 includes a smart network interface card (NIC) 302 which functions as a control center of the FaaS server configuration 300 [Haghighat: 0155]).
With regard to Claim 7, Haghighat-Lee-Wang teaches:
The device of claim 1, wherein the network device is associated with one or more counters associated with one or more queues; (function as a service (FaaS) system 1210 may include a scheduler 1212 with queues 1214 that includes an events queue 1218, function queue 1216, triggers queue 1220, etc. [Haghighat: 0285], wherein the RMID resource tracking tag may be used to track FaaS functions [Haghighat: 0649]);
and wherein the one or more response circuits are further to, in response to the request, set the one or more counters associated with the one or more queues to zero; (clearing the counters on demand prior to reassigning and recycling a PASID or RMID for a new tenant [Haghighat: 0656; 0659-62; Fig. 23]. Lee teaches the destination computing host transmits a request message to the management host to reassign a first VF from a source VM to a destination VM [Lee: 0056]. Wang teaches the network device may set the first statistical number to an initial value by resetting its recorded current statistical number of received packets to zero [Wang: p. 15]).
With regard to Claim 9, Haghighat-Lee-Wang teaches:
The device of claim 1, wherein prior to setting the one or more of the counter and the statistic to zero the one or more of the counter and the statistic comprises a counter indicating a number of packets transmitted and received by the network device prior to being assigned to the container; (a function as a service (FaaS) architecture 600 comprising features 618 in a VMM 616 (virtual machine monitor, e.g., hypervisor) that implement hardware performance monitoring counters and software event counters such as the number of packets received or transmitted [Haghighat: 0177; 0194; Figs. 6A & 7A]).
With regard to Claim 11, Haghighat-Lee-Wang teaches:
The device of claim 1, wherein setting the one or more of the counter and the statistic to zero comprises setting values associated with each of the one or more of the counter and the statistic to zero; (clear the counters on demand, and subsequently reassign and recycle a PASID or RMID for a new tenant [Haghighat: 0656; 0659-62; Fig. 23]. Wang teaches the network device may set the first statistical number to an initial value by resetting its recorded current statistical number of received packets to zero [Wang: p. 15]).
With regard to Claim 13, Haghighat-Lee-Wang teaches:
The device of claim 1, wherein the network device is associated with one or more of a virtio network device and an RDMA device; (the OS may expose a function call API to the functions to make all functions global and remote direct memory access (RDMA) accessible [Haghighat: 0221]).
With regard to Claims 14-20, they appear substantially similar to the limitations recited by claims 1-4 and consequently do not appear to teach or further define over the citations provided for said claims. Accordingly, claims 14-20 are rejected for the same reasons as set forth in claims 1-4.
Claim 6 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Haghighat et al. (US 2021/0263779 A1) in view of Lee et al. (US 2019/0163521 A1) in view of Wang (CN 113132171 B) as applied to Claim 1 above, and further in view of Kotta et al. (US 2017/0147519 A1).
With regard to Claim 6, Haghighat-Lee-Wang teaches:
The device of claim 1, wherein the setting of the one or more of the counter and the statistic to zero is associated with a hypervisor; (a function as a service (FaaS) architecture 600 comprising features 618 in a VMM 616 (virtual machine monitor, e.g., hypervisor) that implement hardware performance monitoring counters and software event counters such as the number of packets received or transmitted [Haghighat: 0177; 0194; Figs. 6A & 7A]).
However, Haghighat-Lee-Wang does not teach:
wherein the setting of the one or more of the counter and the statistic to zero is performed in response to a command from a hypervisor.
In a similar field of endeavor involving I/O statistics tracking, Kotta discloses:
wherein the resetting of the one or more of the counter and the statistic is performed in response to a command from a hypervisor; (resetting statistics by a hypervisor or statistics tracking program when an I/O device is removed from a system [Kotta: 0036]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Haghighat-Lee-Wang in view of Kotta in order to reset the counter in response to a command from a hypervisor in the system of Haghighat-Lee-Wang.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine Haghighat-Lee-Wang with Kotta as doing so would allow the hypervisor that is implementing the counters to also control resetting of the counters when a device is removed from a system.
Claim 8 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Haghighat et al. (US 2021/0263779 A1) in view of Lee et al. (US 2019/0163521 A1) in view of Wang (CN 113132171 B) as applied to Claim 1 above, and further in view of Cornett et al. (US 2019/0042293 A1).
With regard to Claim 8, Haghighat-Lee-Wang teaches:
The device of claim 1, wherein prior to setting the one or more of the counter and the statistic to zero the one or more of the counter and the statistic comprises a counter indicating a number of packets transmitted and received by the network device prior to being assigned to the container; (a function as a service (FaaS) architecture 600 comprising features 618 in a VMM 616 (virtual machine monitor, e.g., hypervisor) that implement hardware performance monitoring counters and software event counters such as the number of packets received or transmitted [Haghighat: 0177; 0194; Figs. 6A & 7A]).
However, Haghighat-Lee-Wang does not teach (where underlining indicates the portion of each limitation not taught):
the one or more of the counter and the statistic comprises a counter indicating a number of bits transmitted and received by the network device.
In a similar field of endeavor involving track a plurality of active counters associated with a network flow, Cornett discloses:
the one or more of the counter and the statistic comprises a counter indicating a number of bits transmitted and received by the network device; (a NIC may track network statistics via counters that are implemented in dedicated memory such as a total number of packets sent/received, total number of bytes set/received, etc. [Cornett: 0014]. Examiner notes that a byte is equivalent to 8 bits).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Haghighat-Lee-Wang in view of Cornett in order to track a statistic comprising a number of bits associated with the network device in the system of Haghighat-Lee-Wang.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine Haghighat-Lee-Wang with Cornett as doing so would allow the NIC to monitor usage and assist in identifying network performance issues.
Claim 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Haghighat et al. (US 2021/0263779 A1) in view of Lee et al. (US 2019/0163521 A1) in view of Wang (CN 113132171 B) as applied to Claim 1 above, and further in view of Skirmont et al. (US 2011/0066909 A1).
With regard to Claim 10, Haghighat-Lee-Wang teaches:
The device of claim 1, wherein prior to setting the one or more of the counter and the statistic to zero the one or more of the counter and the statistic comprises a statistic indicating a number of packets associated with the network device prior to being assigned to the container; (a function as a service (FaaS) architecture 600 comprising features 618 in a VMM 616 (virtual machine monitor, e.g., hypervisor) that implement hardware performance monitoring counters and software event counters such as the number of packets received or transmitted [Haghighat: 0177; 0194; Figs. 6A & 7A]).
However, Haghighat-Lee-Wang does not teach (where underlining indicates the portion of each limitation not taught):
the one or more of the counter and the statistic comprises a statistic indicating a number of errors associated with the network device.
In a similar field of endeavor involving tracking network interface statistics, Skirmont discloses:
the one or more of the counter and the statistic comprises a statistic indicating a number of errors associated with the network device; (determine bit error rates of the receiving and transmitting modules for a network device [Skirmont: 0008; Claim 16; Fig. 5]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Haghighat-Lee-Wang in view of Skirmont in order to track a statistic comprising a number of errors associated with the network device in the system of Haghighat-Lee-Wang.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine Haghighat-Lee-Wang with Skirmont as doing so would allow the bit error rate to be determined and provided to an administrator for diagnostic purposes [Skirmont: 0028].
Claim 12 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Haghighat et al. (US 2021/0263779 A1) in view of Lee et al. (US 2019/0163521 A1) in view of Wang (CN 113132171 B) as applied to Claim 1 above, and further in view of Kamble et al. (US 2016/0087867 A1).
With regard to Claim 12, Haghighat-Lee-Wang teaches the device of claim 1, but does not teach:
wherein the one or more of the counter and the statistic is stored in a registry associated with the network device.
In a similar field of endeavor involving collecting statistics to understand and manage network elements, Kamble discloses:
wherein the one or more of the counter and the statistic is stored in a registry associated with the network device; (storing the statistics in a memory or a set of registers [Kamble: 0020-21; 0091]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Haghighat-Lee-Wang in view of Kamble in order to store the statistics in a register in the system of Haghighat-Lee-Wang.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine Haghighat-Lee-Wang with Kamble as doing so would allow the network statistics to be made available and recalled when needed.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Lu et al. (US 2025/0036481 A1) which teaches when the device end is the accelerator card, each of the physical function and the virtual function may be understood as a subset of functions of the accelerator card such that the physical function is mainly used by the administrator and the virtual function is mainly used by the user [Lu: 0078].
Kamble et al. (US 2016/0087867 A1) which teaches the NIC 414 of the overlay-capable server 404 running a hypervisor 416 is used to perform statistics creation and gathering, [Kamble: 0073].
In the case of amendments, Applicant is respectfully requested to indicate the portion(s) of the specification which dictate(s) the structure relied on for proper interpretation and support, for ascertaining the metes and bounds of the claimed invention.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to AUSTIN J MOREAU whose telephone number is (571) 272-5179. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9:00 - 6:00 ET.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Brian Gillis can be reached on 571-272-7952. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/AUSTIN J MOREAU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2446