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 .
DETAILED ACTION
2. This office action is in response to the amendment filed on 11/26/2025. Claims 8-10 and 18-20 are canceled and claims 1-7 and 11-17 are pending and have been considered below.
3. The rejections of Claims 4-9 and 14-20 under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph are moot pursuant to claims amendment.
4. The rejections of Claims 1-20 under 35 U.S.C. 101 as directed to non-statutory subject matter are moot pursuant to amendment and arguments.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
5. 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.
6. Claim(s) 1-7 and 11-17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 unpatentable over GAO et al. (CN 114003859) in view of Yang et al. (CN 110473137).
Claim 1. GAO discloses a three-dimensional (3D) pooling operation method for computing an input tensor to generate an output tensor, the input tensor comprising a plurality of input tiles, and the output tensor comprising a plurality of output tiles, the method comprising:
(A) reading from an external memory one of the input tiles as a target input tile and storing the target input tile in a memory (…steps of obtaining three-dimensional
Data…) (abstract);
(B) reading from the memory the target input tile (DDR memory 320 may be used to load and store data and/or instructions) ([0065]);
(C) performing a first (2D) pooling operation on the target input tile R times to generate an intermediate tensor, R being a positive integer (performing two-dimensional convolution operation on the two-dimensional input data and the two-dimensional convolution kernel to obtain a plurality of first two-dimensional convolution operation) (abstract)
results);
(D) performing a second 2D pooling operation on the intermediate tensor one time to generate a target output tile of the output tiles (obtaining a second two-dimensional convolution operation result of each three-dimensional data block based on the first two-dimensional convolution operation result) (abstract); and
(E) storing the target output tile in the memory ([0065]); wherein, when the instruction indicates that dimensions of the input tensor include a depth dimension, a height dimension, and a width dimension, then R=Kd, and when the instruction indicates that dimensions of the input tensor include only two of the depth dimension, the height dimension, and the width dimension, then R=1, wherein, Kd is a size of a first sliding window in depth direction ([0015], [0053],[0060], claim 7).
GAO does not explicitly disclose performing by a two-dimensional (2D) vector core in response to an instruction.
However, Yang discloses vector calculation unit that is used for calculations such as pooling ([0098]). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate this feature in GAO. One would have been motivated to do so in order to reduce space convolutional neural network model.
Claim 2. GAO and Yang disclose the method of claim 1, GAO further discloses wherein the intermediate tensor has a first dimension parameter and a second dimension parameter, the step (D) comprising: using a third dimension parameter to represent a combination of the first dimension parameter and the second dimension parameter; and setting a size of a sliding window corresponding to the third dimension parameter to one, setting a stride of the sliding window corresponding to the third dimension parameter to one, and setting a padding corresponding to the third dimension parameter to zero ([0015],[0024], [0034],[0060]).
Claim 3. GAO and Yang disclose the method of claim 2, GAO discloses wherein a product of the first dimension parameter and the second dimension parameter is equal to the third dimension parameter ([0081]).
Claim 4. GAO and Yang disclose the method of claim 1, GAO discloses wherein the memory stores a first sub-tensor and a second sub-tensor of the target input tile, the second sub-tensor immediately follows the first sub-tensor, the step (C) processes the first sub-tensor and the second sub-tensor, and R is one ([0079],[0083]).
Claim 5. GAO and Yang disclose the method of claim 4, GAO discloses wherein the first sub-tensor has a first channel dimension, the second sub-tensor has a second channel dimension, the step (B) reads the first sub-tensor and the second sub-tensor in response to an instruction, and a target number of channels of the instruction is greater than or equal to a sum of the first channel dimension and the second channel dimension ([0082],[0094],[0104]).
Claim 6. GAO and Yang disclose the method of claim 5, GAO discloses wherein the first channel dimension is equal to the second channel dimension ([0098]).
Claim 7. GAO and Yang disclose the method of claim 5, GAO discloses wherein both the first channel dimension and the second channel dimension are equal to a width of the memory divided by a data format of the input tensor ([0015]-[0016]).
Claims 11-17 represent the processing unit of claims 1-9, respectively and are rejected along the same rationale
Response to Arguments
7. Applicant’s arguments filed 11/26/2025 have been fully considered but they are moot in light of new ground of rejection(s).
Conclusion
8. 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 nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) 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 mailing date of this final action.
9. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure (see PTOL-892).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Phenuel S. Salomon whose telephone number is (571) 270-1699. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Fri 7:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. (Alternate Friday Off) EST.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Usmaan Saeed can be reached on (571) 272-4046. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-3800.
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/PHENUEL S SALOMON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2146