DETAILED ACTION
This action is in response to the application filed on 12 December 2022.
Claims 1-20 are under examination.
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 .
Specification
The lengthy specification has not been checked to the extent necessary to determine the presence of all possible minor errors. Applicant's cooperation is requested in correcting any errors of which applicant may become aware in the specification.
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, 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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
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, 2, 6, 7, 10–12, 14, 15, 17–19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Hikimochi et al. (US Pub. 2019/0356612) in view of Lavian et al. (US 6,850,989).
Regarding claim 1, Hikimochi et al. (US 2019/0356612 A1) discloses an apparatus comprising: at least one network interface device that comprises circuitry to perform Deterministic Networking (DetNet) packet forwarding operations; at least one input port; at least one output port; and a bus that is to provide communications, at a quality of service (QoS), among the network interface device, the at least one input port, and the at least one output port, as Hikimochi teaches packet transfer control in a layer 2 switch using “IEEE 802.1 TSN (Time Sensitive Networking)” (¶[0004]) and “gates … corresponding to respective transmission/reception ports” with gate control across ports (Fig. 2, 4; ¶[0060, 0069]). Hikimochi does not disclose wherein a number of network interface devices, a number of input ports, and a number of output ports are based on an amount of DetNet traffic to process prior to transmission. Lavian et al. (US 6,850,989 B1) discloses this limitation, as Lavian teaches monitoring traffic on ports, comparing the monitored traffic to threshold conditions, and automatically configuring the switch based on the traffic, including configuring switch ports in response to traffic demand. (Fig. 3, 5; 5:1-29; 5:41-54) Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify Hikimochi to incorporate Lavian’s traffic-based configuration in order to configure and utilize network interface devices and ports based on traffic load, thereby improving efficiency and managing system load, wherein configuring the switch includes determining a number of ports and interface devices to be activated or utilized.
Regarding claim 2, Hikimochi discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the Deterministic Networking (DetNet) packet forwarding operations are consistent at least with Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Request for Comment (RFC) 8655 (2019) and RFC 8938 (2020), as Hikimochi teaches deterministic forwarding using IEEE 802.1 TSN (¶[0004]).
Regarding claim 6, Hikimochi discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the bus is to operate consistent with one or more of: Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe), Compute Express Link (CXL), or Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe), as implementing internal communication buses using known interconnect standards would have been obvious design choices for one of ordinary skill in the art. (¶[0060])
Regarding claim 7, Hikimochi discloses the apparatus of claim 1, comprising at least one processor and at least one memory device, wherein a number of at least one processor and a number of at least one memory device is based on an amount of non-deterministic packet traffic, except for the traffic-based scaling of processors and memory. Lavian discloses traffic-based configuration of switch resources based on monitored traffic and thresholds. Thus, it would have been obvious to extend Lavian’s traffic-based configuration to processors and memory resources to manage processing load. (¶[0069])
Regarding claim 10, Hikimochi discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein 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), as Hikimochi teaches a layer 2 switch device (¶[0004]).
Regarding claim 11, Lavian discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein one or more of the number of network interface devices, the number of input ports, and/or the number of output ports are increased based on an increase in amount of Deterministic Networking (DetNet) traffic to process prior to transmission. Lavian discloses configuring switch ports based on traffic thresholds, which inherently increases resource usage when traffic increases. (5:1-29) Thus, it would have been obvious to increase the number or usage of ports based on increased traffic.
Regarding claim 12, Latvian discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein one or more of the number of network interface devices, the number of input ports, and/or the number of output ports are decreased based on a decrease in amount of Deterministic Networking (DetNet) packet traffic to process prior to transmission. Lavian discloses configuring switch resources based on traffic thresholds, which inherently decreases resource usage when traffic decreases. (5:1-29) Thus, it would have been obvious to decrease the number or usage of ports based on decreased traffic.
Claim 14 recites a non-transitory computer-readable medium corresponding to the apparatus of claim 1, and is thus similarly rejected.
Regarding claim 15, Hikimochi discloses the non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 14, wherein the Deterministic Networking (DetNet) packet forwarding operations are consistent at least with Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Request for Comment (RFC) 8655 (2019) and RFC 8938 (2020), for the same reasons as claim 2.
Claim 17 recites a method corresponding to the apparatus of claim 1, and is thus similarly rejected.
Regarding claim 18, Hikimochi discloses the method of claim 17, wherein the device resources comprise at least one processor and at least one memory device and comprises: adjusting a number of processors and a number of memory devices based on an amount of non-deterministic packet traffic, except for traffic-based scaling. Lavian discloses traffic-based configuration, and thus it would have been obvious to extend such scaling. (5:1-29)
Regarding claim 19, Hikimochi discloses the method of claim 17, wherein the Deterministic Networking (DetNet) packet forwarding operations are consistent at least with Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Request for Comment (RFC) 8655 (2019) and RFC 8938 (2020), for the same reasons as claim 2.
Claims 3–5, 8–9, 13, 16, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Hikimochi et al. in view of Lavian et al. and further in view of Watts et al. (US Pub. 2023/0118915).
Regarding claim 3, Hikimochi-Lavian does not disclose the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the circuitry to perform Deterministic Networking (DetNet) packet forwarding operations comprises circuitry to perform packet processing based on Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS) and Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN). Watts discloses MPLS-based packet processing, as Watts teaches “the routing table may cause the network devices 110 to provide source-based Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) routing …” (¶[0024]). Hikimochi discloses TSN-based packet forwarding using IEEE 802.1 TSN (¶[0004]). Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify Hikimochi in view of Lavian to further incorporate MPLS-based packet processing of Watts in order to support label-based forwarding in conjunction with TSN for deterministic networking operations.
Regarding claim 4, Hikimochi-Lavian does not disclose the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the circuitry to perform Deterministic Networking (DetNet) packet forwarding operations is configured using a configuration from a software-defined networking (SDN) controller. Watts discloses SDN-based configuration, as Watts teaches “provide the routing table … over a network interface, such as a software defined network interface” (¶[0024]). Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify Hikimochi in view of Lavian to further incorporate SDN-based configuration of Watts in order to enable centralized configuration of packet forwarding operations.
Regarding claim 5, Hikimochi-Lavian does not disclose the apparatus of claim 4, wherein the configuration comprises a Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS) routing table. Watts discloses MPLS routing tables, as Watts teaches “the routing table may cause the network devices 110 to provide … Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) routing …” (¶[0024]). Thus, it would have been obvious to incorporate MPLS routing tables of Watts into the configuration of Hikimochi.
Regarding claim 8, Hikimochi-Lavian does not disclose the apparatus of claim 7, comprising a cluster comprising a first system … and a second system … wherein a load of Deterministic Networking (DetNet) packet traffic is allocated among the first and second systems. Watts discloses routing traffic across multiple network devices via traffic paths, as Watts teaches “the routing data … may cause the network devices 110 to utilize traffic paths …” (¶[0024]). Thus, it would have been obvious to distribute load across systems.
Regarding claim 9, Hikimochi-Lavian does not disclose the apparatus of claim 8, wherein the first and second systems are to perform operations of a Network Function Virtualization (NFV) or Service Function Chains (SFC). Watts discloses routing traffic across multiple devices via defined traffic paths (¶[0024]), which corresponds to chaining processing across multiple systems. Thus, it would have been obvious to implement such distributed processing using NFV or SFC techniques.
Regarding claim 13, Hikimochi-Lavian does not disclose the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the number of network interface devices, the number of input ports, and the number of output ports are configured by an orchestrator. Watts discloses centralized configuration, as Watts teaches “QM system 120 may provide the routing table to the network devices 110 …” (¶[0024]). Thus, it would have been obvious to use a centralized orchestrator to configure network resources.
Regarding claim 16, Hikimochi-Lavian does not disclose the non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 14, wherein at least one of the network interface devices performs Deterministic Networking (DetNet) packet forwarding operations based on Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS) and Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN). Watts discloses MPLS routing (¶[0024]) and Hikimochi discloses TSN-based forwarding (¶[0004]). Thus, it would have been obvious to combine MPLS and TSN.
Regarding claim 20, Hikimochi-Lavian does not disclose the method of claim 17, wherein the Deterministic Networking (DetNet) packet forwarding operations are based on Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS) and Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN). Watts discloses MPLS routing (¶[0024]) and Hikimochi discloses TSN-based forwarding (¶[0004]). Thus, it would have been obvious to combine MPLS and TSN.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure (see form 892).
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/Luat Phung/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2468