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 .
This action is responsive to Applicant’s Amendment filed on 7/1/2026.
Claims 1-20 are presented for examination. Claims 1, 8 and 15 have been amended.
Applicant’s amendments to the claims have overcome 112(a) rejections and portions of 112(b) rejections set forth in the non-Final Office Action mailed 4/7/2026.
Examiner Notes
Examiner cites particular columns, paragraphs, figures and line numbers in the references as applied to the claims below for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings in the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested that, in preparing responses, the applicant fully consider the references in entirely as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the examiner.
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.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 2-3, 9-10 and 16-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
Regarding to Claim 2, the meaning of limitation “allocating to the virtual unit the one or more resources that are provisionally allocated to the virtual unit” is not clear. According to the current requirement of claim 1 (claim 2 depends on claim 1), “at least one resource from the one or more resources” now is currently provisionally re-allocated to “virtual units of the second group request”. In this way, it is not clear that whether allocating “the one or more resources” from claim 2 includes allocating such claimed “at least one resource” to the virtual unit (of the first group request). If Applicant considers the re-allocating from claim 1 is about re-allocating some of resources from one or more resources after completion of the first group request, then such re-allocating is re-allocating at least one resource from the one or more resources that are allocated to first group request instead of at least one resource from the one or more resources that are provisionally allocated to the first group request as required by current claim 1.
For the purpose of examination, examiner interprets this allocating is performed at alternative embodiment or result of the claimed “provisionally re-allocating” resources for the claimed second group request that it does not re-allocating any resources that are already provisionally allocated to the first group request to the second group request (note: such interpretation is supported by Applicant’s Fig. 7A-7E, i.e., there is embodiment of new group requests are serviced via provisionally allocating non-provisionally allocated resources).
Claim 3 is rejected for failing to cure the deficiency from its respective parent claim by dependency.
Regarding to Claim 9, Claim 9 is rejected under the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 2 above.
Claim 10 is rejected for failing to cure the deficiency from its respective parent claim by dependency.
Regarding to Claim 16, Claim 16 is rejected under the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 2 above.
Claim 17 is rejected for failing to cure the deficiency from its respective parent claim by dependency.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
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.
Claims 1-2, 6-9, 13-16 and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yazir et al. (US 20170078409 A1, hereafter Yazir) in view of Jreij et al. (US 20220179700 A1, hereafter Jreij), Cambou (US 20170046129 A1) and Banerjee et al. (US 20130007279 A1, hereafter Banerjee) and Yu et al. (CN 105103507 B-English translation provided by Google Patents, hereafter Yu, publication date: 11/25/2015).
Regarding to claim 1, Yazier discloses: A computer-implemented method for provisionally scheduling one or more resources in a cloud computing environment (see [0016]; “System, methods, apparatuses, and computer-readable media are provided for enabling multi-component service placement in a resource pool using distributed techniques … one or more data centers serving as a part or entirety of a computing cloud” and “Accordingly, the root agent 104 can send instructions to reserve resources for the service based upon the received one or more solution encodings”), comprising:
obtaining a first group request to host an application, wherein the first group request comprises one or more virtual units, and wherein each of the one or more virtual units comprise one or more topological constraints (see [0004], [0016]-[0017] and [0060]; “the workload of the cloud comes from various services ranging from delay-sensitive services such as gaming, video-conferencing, and multi-tier web services, to delay-tolerant batch services such as high performance computing and map-reduce types of applications. Such services usually operate through the use of one or more software components”, “a virtual infrastructure request can be submitted to a resource pool of one or more data centers serving as a part or entirety of a computing cloud, computing grid, computing cluster, etc. In some embodiments, service requests specifying resource requirements for multi-component services are received by a root agent 104”, “possible placements of some or all of the components of a service request description of the service request” and “service requests specifying resource requirements for multiple components of the service—and possibly location or affinity constraints for the service and/or for particular components”. Note: resource requirements for multiple components of the service are also considered as part of the claimed topological constraints. Also see [0074]-[0076] for similar descriptions);
scheduling the one or more resources for each of the one or more virtual units, wherein the scheduling comprises provisionally allocating the one or more resources to each of the one or more virtual units according to the one or more topological constraints, and wherein the one or more topological constraints are utilized to determine which resources meet a predetermined requirement set (see [0016]; “determine whether the particular corresponding service request may or may not be fulfilled, can identify a complete set of possible placements for the service that satisfies the stated resource requirements and satisfies any constraints placed upon the service or individual components. Accordingly, the root agent 104 can send instructions to reserve resources for the service based upon the received one or more solution encodings”. Also see [0076] for the description of affinity constraint and [0115] for the description of a geographic constraint to be mapped to amended limitation of “topological constraints are utilized to determine which resources meet a predetermined requirement set”); and
responsive to obtaining a second group request, provisionally re-allocating resources to one or more virtual units of the second group request according to one or more topological constraints of the second group request (see [0033], [0042]; “to receive service requests from clients indicating resource requirements for services to be deployed including pluralities of components” and “one or more of the service requests received by the root agent 104”. Also see [0004], [0016]-[0017], [0060] and the rejections of the claimed obtaining and claimed scheduling limitations for claimed first group request above. It is understood that the whole method or system described by Yazier at one of the reasonable embodiments would receive another or different service request and handle such another or different service request as similar as the received first service request as explained at the obtaining and scheduling limitations above (note: it is unreasonable that the method or system of Yazier is only able to perform same handling mechanism once))
Yazier does not disclose:
wherein each of the one or more resources comprises a respective weight;
the provisionally re-allocating resources for the second group request is provisionally re-allocating at least one resource from the one or more resources that are provisionally allocated to the first group request to one or more virtual units of the second group request according to the respective weight of each of the one or more resources, wherein the provisionally allocated resources remain subject to re-allocation until an invocation request for a corresponding virtual unit is obtained, wherein resources required for an actual allocation have a lower priority for re-allocation than resources that are provisionally allocated, wherein the re-allocating minimizes a summation of the respective weight of the one or more resources, and wherein at least one resource provisionally re-allocated to the second group request is a particular resource that was provisionally allocated to the first group request;
assigning a new respective weight to each of the one or more resources.
However, Jreij discloses: a computer-implemented method for provisionally scheduling one or more resources, comprising:
scheduling the one or more resources for first request, wherein the scheduling comprises provisionally allocating, the one or more resources to the first request (see [0186]; “the free computing resources (or a portion necessary to satisfy the computing resource needs of the workload) are reserved to obtain reserved resources”. Also see [0196]; “modifying information included in a reserved resources management repository (e.g., 416, FIG. 4) to indicate that the resources previously reserved for other workload(s) are now reserved for the workload associated with the workload request”. The resources that were reserved to other workload can be modified or re-reserved to another workload, and thus the reserved resource is in a changeable state), and wherein each of the one or more resources comprises a availability state (see [0186], [0194]-[0197]; “whether the reserved processing resources can be freed” and “a composed information handling system may be composed to service the workload request of step 500 using the reserved resources obtained in step 512”. Each of resources can be classified as free state, reserved state and actually allocated state);
responsive to obtaining a second [group] request, provisionally re-allocating at least one resource from the one or more resources that are provisionally allocated to the first [group] request to the second [group] request according to the one or more constraints of the second [group] request and the receptive availability status of each of the one or more resources, wherein the provisionally allocated resources remain subject to re-allocation, wherein resources required for an actual allocation have a lower priority for re-allocation than resources that are provisionally allocated, and wherein at least one resource provisionally re-allocated to the second [group] request is a particular resource that was provisionally allocated to the first [group] request; and assigning a new respective availability status to each of the one or more resources (see [0186] and [0194]-[0197]; “the free computing resources (or a portion necessary to satisfy the computing resource needs of the workload) are reserved to obtain reserved resources”, “if free resources are not available to meet the future resource needs”, “the reserved resources are freed and then reserved to obtain reserved resources for the workload. The resources may be freed and then reserved by, for example, modifying information included in a reserved resources management repository (e.g., 416, FIG. 4) to indicate that the resources previously reserved for other workload(s) are now reserved for the workload associated with the workload request”, emphasis added. Performing another round of resource allocation/reservation, such another round of resource allocation/reservation may re-reserve or re-allocate at least one resource that was already reserved to other workload/request to another workload/request, the result of such another round of resource allocation/reservation would change or update resource availability status of resources at the system. The resource allocation for other workloads only involves available resources and reserved resources without using the resource that already actually allocated, and thus the “resources required for an actual allocation have a lower priority for re-allocation than resources that are provisionally allocated”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the usage of reserved resources from Yazier by including it is possible to re-reserve reserved resources from one workload to another workload from Jreij, since it would provide a mechanism of not only being able to reserve resources for requested service but also being able to preempt reserved resources for higher priority service (see [0163]-[0164], [0172] and [0193] from Jreij; “reservations of hardware devices may be limited based on multi-dimensional criteria (e.g., limited both by type of workload and priority of workload) having any number of dimensions” and “If the comparison indicates that the workload should be prioritized over the other workloads, then the determination may be made that the reserved resources can be freed to meet the future resource needs”).
In addition, Cambou discloses: wherein each of the one or more resources comprises a respective weight (see [0070]; “values of a physical parameter for various memory cells in an array and an assignment of the memory cells as having 0, 1, and X (ternary) state values” and “identifying three types of cells in the memory being analyzed: the ones that are solidly a “0” far away from the transition point between the first and second threshold value, the ones that are solidly a “1” also far away from the transition point, with remaining ones between the first and second threshold values being given a ternary state value “X””).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the indications of three different resource states from the combination of Yazier and Jreij by including numeric-value indication of three different resource states from Cambou, and thus the combination of Yazier, Jreij and Cambou would discloses missing limitations of “wherein each of the one or more resources comprises a respective weight” and “assigning a new respective weight to each of the one or more resources”, since it is understood that numeric-value indication is easier to be understood by computing system.
Furthermore, Banerjee discloses: wherein the re-allocating minimizes a summation of amount of the one or more resources (see [0042]-[0047]; “the objective function may be to minimize the total cost to deploy all of the application subject to various constraints”, “The amount of processor capacity on a server to be reserved … ensure that each deployed application on a server may get a minimum amount of processor resources”, “The amount of memory capacity on a server to be reserved … it may be desirable that each deployed application on a server may get a minimum amount of memory resources”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the resource reservation operations from the combination of Yazier, Jreij and Cambou by including reserving or allocating minimum amount of required resources from Banerjee, and thus the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou and Banerjee would disclose the missing limitation of “wherein the re-allocating minimizes a summation of the respective weight of the one or more resources” (note: based on the feature combined from Banerjee, i.e., allocating minimum amount of resources to service a workload/task/request, the total weight of the resources is also minimized, and thus the new combination of reference does teach the limitation of “wherein the re-allocating minimizes a summation of each respective weight of the one or more resources”), since it would provide a mechanism of effective resource consumption via allocating minimum requested amount of resources for operations (see [0042]-[0047] from Banerjee).
In addition, Yu discloses: wherein the provisionally allocated resources remain subject to re-allocation until an invocation request for a corresponding virtual unit is obtained (see [0180]-[0184]; “the state of the local resource may include: the local resource is available, the local resource has been reserved, and the local resource has been allocated … when the local resource status is allocated, NFVO receives the local resource unreservable information sent by VIM”, “ If the local resource reservation success information is received, the NFVO sends the instantiation request to the VNFM”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the virtual unit execution operation from the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou and Banerjee by including an instantiation request of individual virtual unit from Yu, and thus the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Yu would disclose the missing limitations from Yazier, since it would provide a mechanism to proactively instantiating virtual unit via an instantiation request to ensure the resource is actually allocated instead of being reserved (see [0180]-[0184] from Yu).
Regarding to Claim 2, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Yu discloses: responsive to obtaining an invocation request for a virtual unit, allocating to the virtual unit the one or more resources that are provisionally allocated to the virtual unit (see [0188] from Jreij and [0181]-[0184] from Yi; “a composed information handling system is composed using the reserved resources to service the workload request. The composed information handling system may be composed by (i) instantiating a new composed information handling system using the reserved computing resources” and “receiving local resource reserves successful information, NFVO is sent to VNFM by request is instantiated … NFVO receives the instantiation result that VNFM is sent”. After the reservation or provisionally allocation of resources to the requested service is completed, the combination system would issue an instantiation request to instantiate the virtual components or units of the requested service, and thus the resources reserved or provisionally allocated to the corresponding virtual components or units would be actually allocated for the instantiation operations)
Regarding to Claim 6, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Yu discloses: wherein a respective weight is calculated based upon heuristics and at least one of the following: uniformity of resources requested by an application, nature of tasks performed by an application, application user type, application user group, application priority, application resource consumption, application duration of execution, application execution constraints, application complexity, time of day of application execution geography in which application is executed, adherence to application service level agreements (SLAs) and incentives, phase of application execution, and application resource consumption elasticity (see [0186], [0194]-[0197] from Jreij; “whether the reserved processing resources can be freed” and “a composed information handling system may be composed to service the workload request of step 500 using the reserved resources obtained in step 512”. Each of resources can be classified as free state, reserved state and actually allocated state. Under BRI, the three different resource allocation states of being available for allocation, being reserved or provisionally allocated and being actually allocated are reasonable to be considered as phase of application execution, i.e., application execution phase of no resources allocated for execution, application execution phase of resource being reserved for execution and application execution phase of resource being allocated for execution, thereby, the resource allocation states are determined based on heuristics and phase of application execution. Also see [0070] from Cambou; “values of a physical parameter for various memory cells in an array and an assignment of the memory cells as having 0, 1, and X (ternary) state values” and “identifying three types of cells in the memory being analyzed: the ones that are solidly a “0” far away from the transition point between the first and second threshold value, the ones that are solidly a “1” also far away from the transition point, with remaining ones between the first and second threshold values being given a ternary state value “X””).
Regarding to Claim 7, the rejection of Claim 6 is incorporated and further the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Yu discloses: wherein a resource of the one or more resources having an assigned respective weight of zero (0) indicates that the resource is available for allocation, wherein a resource of the one or more resources having an assigned respective weight between zero (0) and one (1) indicates that the resource is provisionally allocated, wherein a resource of the one or more resources having an assigned respective weight of one (1) indicates that the resource is already allocated, and wherein a first resource of the one or more resources having a greater assigned respective weight than a second resource of the one or more resources indicates that the first resource has a lower priority for re-allocation than the second resource (see [0186], [0194]-[0197] from Jreij and [0070] from Cambou; “whether the reserved processing resources can be freed”, “a composed information handling system may be composed to service the workload request of step 500 using the reserved resources obtained in step 512”, and “values of a physical parameter for various memory cells in an array and an assignment of the memory cells as having 0, 1, and X (ternary) state values”. At the combination system, it is understood that after applying the feature of using numeric-value to indicates three different resource states from Cambou, the resource being available for allocation can be indicated by value “0”, the resource being actually allocated can be indicated by value “1” and the resource being reserved or provisionally allocated can be indicated by value between “0” and “1”. In addition, the resources being reserved are re-allocated or re-reserved when free resources are not sufficient to meet the requirement of new workload/request, and thus resource having a greater assigned respective weight has a lower priority for re-allocation).
Regarding to Claim 8, Claim 8 is a system claim corresponds to method Claim 1 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 1 above (note: also see Fig. 10, [0173]-[0176] from Yazir for the claimed limitation of: a memory medium … causes the system to; “The data processing system 1000 includes memory 1010, which is coupled to the microprocessor(s) 1005. The memory 1010 may be used for storing data, metadata, and programs for execution by the microprocessor(s) 1005. For example, the depicted memory 1010 may store computer instructions 1030 that, when executed by the microprocessor(s) 1005, causes the data processing system 1000 to perform the operations described herein” and “It will be appreciated that one or more buses may be used to interconnect the various components shown in FIG. 10”).
Regarding to Claim 9, Claim 9 is a system claim corresponds to method Claim 2 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 2 above.
Regarding to Claim 13, Claim 13 is a system claim corresponds to method Claim 6 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 6 above.
Regarding to Claim 14, Claim 14 is a system claim corresponds to method Claim 7 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 7 above.
Regarding to Claim 15, Claim 15 is a product claim corresponds to method Claim 1 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 1 above (note: also see [0178] from Yazir for the claimed limitation of: a computer program product … a computer readable hardware storage device, and program instructions stored on the computer readable hardware storage device; “the computer-implemented methods may be carried out in a computer system or other data processing system in response to its processor or processing system executing sequences of instructions contained in a memory, such as memory 1010 or other non-transitory machine-readable storage medium” ).
Regarding to Claim 16, Claim 16 is a product claim corresponds to method Claim 2 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 2 above.
Regarding to Claim 19, Claim 19 is a product claim corresponds to method Claim 6 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 6 above.
Regarding to Claim 20, Claim 20 is a product claim corresponds to method Claim 7 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 7 above.
Claims 3, 10 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yazir et al. (US 20170078409 A1, hereafter Yazir) in view of Jreij et al. (US 20220179700 A1, hereafter Jreij), Cambou (US 20170046129 A1), Banerjee et al. (US 20130007279 A1, hereafter Banerjee) and Yu et al. (CN 105103507 B-English translation provided by Google Patents, hereafter Yu, publication date: 11/25/2015) and further in view of Babic (US 20110296473 A1).
Regarding to Claim 3, the rejection of Claim 2 is incorporated and further the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Yu discloses: wherein the one or more topological constraints of the first group request and the second group request are met (see [0016] from Yazier; “one or more solution encodings indicating possible placements of some or all of the components of a service request description of the service request that the one or more computing devices can locally provide while satisfying the resource requirements of the some or all of the components … identify a complete set of possible placements for the service that satisfies the stated resource requirements and satisfies any constraints placed upon the service or individual components”).
The combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Yu does not disclose: responsive to a placement failure of the first group request, re-allocating the one or more resources that are allocated to the one or more virtual units of the first group request.
In addition, Babic discloses: responsive to a placement failure of the service, re-allocating the one or more resources that are allocated to the service (see [0057], [0092]-[0093]; “the VWAP 130 automatically verifies that the raw video is routed properly, and, if not, automatically repeats the process until properly routed. The VWAP 130 can retry the same resource, and after a specified number of attempts, the VWAP 130 can provision one or more failover resources that are not currently being used” and “automatically select one of the publishing resources not currently being used … confirms whether the publishing point is provisioned (block 234). If at block 234, the publishing point is not properly provisioned, the VWAP 130 retries” and “the VWAP 130 can be configured to retry a specified number of times, and if still unsuccessful, post that the retries have failed to the VWAP database 132 to indicate that the resources cannot be provisioned”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the resource allocation for requested service from the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Yu by including retrying allocating same resource for operation in response failure of service via the allocated resource from Babic, and thus the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee, Yu and Babic would disclose the missing limitations from the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Yu, since it would provide a simple fault handling mechanism to be performed in response to failure (see [0092]-[0093] from Babic; “the VWAP 130 can be configured to retry a specified number of times, and if still unsuccessful, post that the retries have failed to the VWAP database 132 to indicate that the resources cannot be provisioned”).
Regarding to Claim 10, Claim 10 is a system claim corresponds to method Claim 3 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 3 above.
Regarding to Claim 17, Claim 17 is a product claim corresponds to method Claim 3 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 3 above.
Claims 4-5, 11-12 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yazir et al. (US 20170078409 A1, hereafter Yazir) in view of Jreij et al. (US 20220179700 A1, hereafter Jreij), Cambou (US 20170046129 A1) and Banerjee et al. (US 20130007279 A1, hereafter Banerjee) and Yu et al. (CN 105103507 B-English translation provided by Google Patents, hereafter Yu, publication date: 11/25/2015) and further in view of further in view of Jain et al. (US 20120195209 A1, hereafter Jain).
Note: Yazir, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Jain were recorded at PTO-892 mailed by 7/1/2025.
Regarding to Claim 4, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Yu discloses: provisionally re-allocating one or more resources that are allocated to an uninvoked first virtual unit to a second virtual unit (see [0186] and [0194]-[0197] from Jreij; “the free computing resources (or a portion necessary to satisfy the computing resource needs of the workload) are reserved to obtain reserved resources”, “if free resources are not available to meet the future resource needs”, “the reserved resources are freed and then reserved to obtain reserved resources for the workload. The resources may be freed and then reserved by, for example, modifying information included in a reserved resources management repository (e.g., 416, FIG. 4) to indicate that the resources previously reserved for other workload(s) are now reserved for the workload associated with the workload request”, emphasis added), wherein the one or more topological constraints of the first group request and the second group request are met (see [0016] from Yazier; “one or more solution encodings indicating possible placements of some or all of the components of a service request description of the service request that the one or more computing devices can locally provide while satisfying the resource requirements of the some or all of the components … identify a complete set of possible placements for the service that satisfies the stated resource requirements and satisfies any constraints placed upon the service or individual components”).
The combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Yu does not disclose: wherein the re-allocating is performed periodically.
However, Jain discloses: re-allocating one or more resources that are allocated to a first object to a second object is performed periodically (see [0028]; “distribute the bandwidth limits on the order of every 5 seconds. In other examples, this exchange of information may occur at other regular or preset intervals, such as every 1-15 seconds, every 1-15 minutes, or upon a predetermined condition, which may be a network triggered event. The distribution is desirably work-conserving, in that any bandwidth not used by a task should be redistributed to other tasks. The job shapers 206 also periodically report job level bandwidth usage to the site brokers 204, via transmission 216”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the resource allocation or re-allocation from the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Yu by including a mechanism of redistributing unused resources from one job to another job from Jain, and thus the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee, Yu and Jain would disclose the missing limitations from the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Yu, since it would provide mechanism of utilizing resource effectively via redistributing unused resources to different jobs (see [0028] from Jain).
Regarding to Claim 5, the rejection of Claim 4 is incorporated and further the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee, Yu and Jain disclose:
wherein the one or more topological constraints comprise: resource location, resource cost, resource availability, resource power consumption, resource network bandwidth, resource latency, and resource storage quota (see [0004], [0008], [0076] from Yazier; “delay-sensitive services … Each component can have certain requirements ranging from the physical characteristics of the host platform—such as an availability of certain hardware accelerators, resources in terms of CPU, memory, storage, and network—to placement and affinity requirements defined via location and colocation constraints”, “a cloud utility cost model (e.g., Service-Level Agreement (SLA) revenue, energy consumption, electricity cost) is optimized is optimized without compromising delay requirements of the workload”, “the service request 120 can include requirements about allowed or prohibited geographical locations for some or all of the components to be deployed, and in some embodiments can include affinity constraints for the components. An affinity constraint can specify particular components of the service that must be placed together on one set of computing resources, and/or particular components that are not to be placed together”. [0004], [0008] and [0076] from Yazier above show the topological constrains comprises resource location (i.e., affinity requirement, allowed or prohibited geographical locations), resource cost and resource availability (i.e., resource requirements and availability in terms of hardware accelerator, CPU), resource power consumption (i.e., energy consumption, electricity cost), resource latency (i.e., delay requirement), resource storage quota (i.e., requirement and availability of resource in terms of memory and storage). For claimed resource network bandwidth, see “bandwidth intensive applications” from [0035] of Banerjee or “Network transmissions might be designated as unenforced when they fall below a predetermined bandwidth threshold” from [0022] of Jain).
Regarding to Claim 11, Claim 11 is a system claim corresponds to method Claim 4 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 4 above.
Regarding to Claim 12, Claim 12 is a system claim corresponds to method Claim 5 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 5 above.
Regarding to Claim 18, Claim 18 is a product claim corresponds to method Claims 4 and 5 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claims 4 and 5 above.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, filed 7/1/2026, with respect to rejections of claims 2-3, 9-10 and 16-17 under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) have been full considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant’s arguments at pages 9-11 are summarized as the following:
“Without conceding the propriety of this rejection, Applicant has amended claims 1, 8, and 15 in order to more clearly define the features thereof in satisfaction of 35 USC §112” (see 1st paragraph of page 11 from the Remarks).
The examiner respectively disagrees.
Applicant amended claims 1, 8 and 15. However, claims 2-3, 9-10 and 16-17 were and are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) for a different reason from the 112 rejections made for claims 1, 8 and 15. Applicant did not make any amendment or response to the 112(b) rejections/issues made for claims 2-3, 9-10 and 16-17.
Therefore, claims 2-3, 9-10 and 16-17 are rejected.
Applicant’s arguments, filed 7/1/2026, with respect to rejections of claims 1-20 under 35 U.S.C. 103 have been full considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant’s arguments at pages 12-15 are summarized as the following:
The references alone or in combination fails to disclose the newly added limitations “wherein the provisionally allocated resources remain subject to re-allocation until an invocation request for a corresponding virtual unit is obtained, wherein resources required for an actual allocation have a lower priority for re-allocation than resources that are provisionally allocated” from the independent claims (see pages 14-15 from the Remarks)
The examiner respectively disagrees.
At least the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee, Yu would teach the newly added limitations from the independent claims. Such as, according to [0186]-[0194]-[0197] from Jreij, the system would use resources that are still available and resources that are already reserved as candidates to perform resource allocation operations without using the resources that are actually allocated, and thus the Jreij does teach features of “wherein the provisionally allocated resources remain subject to re-allocation” and “wherein resources required for an actual allocation have a lower priority for re-allocation than resources that are provisionally allocated”. In addition, according to [0180]-[0184] from Yu, Yu discloses features of the resources that are already reserved are actually allocated in response to an instantiation or invocation request for an virtual unit, and the resources that are actually allocated cannot be the candidates for resource reservation, and thus the combination of Jreij and Yu would disclose the newly added limitation of “wherein the provisionally allocated resources remain subject to re-allocation until an invocation request for a corresponding virtual unit is obtained”.
Therefore, Claims 1-20 are rejected.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Meier (US 6076151 A) discloses: Reserve list 64 is used to record the reserved memory blocks. The reserved memory block is not removed from free list 66 until actually allocated to subsequent requests. In this manner, the reserved memory block is available if unreserved portions of free list 66 are completely allocated and another dynamic memory allocation request is received (see lines 16-22 of col. 10).
Tsuji (US 20080082780 A1) discloses: it actually allocates the reserved memory area in accordance with an allocation request (see [0039]).
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any extension fee pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the date of this final action.
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/Zhi Chen/
Patent Examiner, AU2196
/APRIL Y BLAIR/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2196
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