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 is a Non-Final Office Action responsive to Applicant’s Request for Continued Examination filed 07/23/2026.
Claims 1-9, 11-20, 22-25 are pending.
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, 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.
Claim(s) 1, 2, 4-13, and 15-25 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bernat et al. (US 2020/0285523) in view of Gupta et al. (US 2016/0057041).
With respect to claim 1, Bernat discloses:A method performed at a host computing system for operating a virtual pool of resources in an edge computing network (Abstract, Fig. 1), the method comprising:
identifying availability of a resource at the host computing system (Fig. 3, 304);
transmitting, from a networked processing unit of the host computing system ([0035], lines 17-25: “client computing device 110” corresponds to “networked processing unit”; Fig. 1 “110” is connected via a network to “170”) to a network infrastructure device, a notification that the resource at the host computing system is available for use in a virtual resource pool in the edge computing network (Fig. 3, 306-326, where the orchestrator logic unit corresponds to “network infrastructure device”);
receiving a request for the resource in the virtual resource pool, the request provided on behalf of a client computing system, wherein the request is coordinated via the network infrastructure device, and wherein the request includes at least one quality of service (QoS) requirement ([0067]-[0069] describes QoS requirements, paragraphs [0023], [0089], and [0102] describes resources that are virtualized); and
servicing the request for the resource, based on the at least one QoS requirement ([0070]).
Bernat does not specifically disclose a request from a second networked processing unit of a client computing system.
However, in a different embodiment, Bernat discloses a second networked processing unit that utilizes the resources that the first networked processing unit communicated as available ([0040], lines 9-15) and also a request to augment resources available on a present compute device (Fig. 5, 356).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to realize that Bernat’s orchestrator logic unit matches computing devices that requests resources with resources that have been communicated as available and belongs to other computing devices to ensure workload execution and system utilization is optimized.
Bernat does not specifically disclose: wherein the networked processing unit comprises an infrastructure processing unit or data processing unit that is separate from a central processing unit of the host computing system, and wherein the network infrastructure device comprises a switch, gateway, or access point, that is located in a network connecting the host computing system and a client computing system; and wherein the second networked processing unit comprises an infrastructure processing unit or data processing unit that is separate from a central processing unit of the client computing system, wherein servicing the request comprises allocating the resource to the client computing system.
However, Gupta discloses: wherein the networked processing unit comprises an infrastructure processing unit or data processing unit that is separate from a central processing unit of the host computing system, and wherein the network infrastructure device comprises a switch, gateway, or access point, that is located in a network connecting the host computing system and a client computing system; and wherein the second networked processing unit comprises an infrastructure processing unit or data processing unit that is separate from a central processing unit of the client computing system, wherein servicing the request comprises allocating the resource to the client computing system ([0032], “clients” corresponds to “network processing unit”; “monitoring unit” corresponds to an “access point” as it behaves, under a broad interpretation, a unit that allows access to resources; [0033] “scale a multi-tier application based on the SLA target” corresponds to “allocating the resource to the client”).
With respect to claim 2, Bernat discloses: wherein the resource is a physical resource located at the host computing system, wherein the physical resource is accessible via an interconnect, and wherein servicing the request includes providing access to the physical resource (Fig. 7 or Fig. 9, where nodes correspond to “physical resource”).
With respect to claim 4, Bernat discloses: wherein the resource is a virtual resource accessible via at least one local virtual function or at least one remote virtual function, and wherein servicing the request includes providing access to the virtual function ([0023]).
With respect to claim 5, Bernat discloses: wherein the virtual resource corresponds to a central processing unit (CPU) or hardware compute device (Fig. 3, 308, [0035], line 23-23: “processor 212”).
With respect to claim 6, Bernat discloses: wherein the request is coordinated via the network infrastructure device based on a capability for the virtual resource pool to meet the QoS requirement (Fig. 3, [0035], where orchestrator logic unit corresponds to “network infrastructure device”).
With respect to claim 7, Bernat discloses: wherein the request is coordinated via the network infrastructure device based on at least one of: attestation of the resource, attestation of the request, or attestation of the client computing system ([0095]).
With respect to claim 8, Bernat discloses: verifying an attestation of the request for the resource or attestation of the client computing system, using a trusted attestation server (id.).
With respect to claim 9, Bernat discloses: wherein the request is coordinated via the network infrastructure device and provided to the host computing system based on network telemetry evaluated by the network infrastructure device ([0052]).
With respect to claim 11, Bernat discloses: wherein the networked processing unit or the second network processing unit utilize peer discovery logic to associate the respective units ([0060], [0061], Fig. 3).
With respect to claims 12, 13, 15-20, and 22, they recite similar limitations as claims 1, 2, 4-9, and 11, respectively, and are therefore rejected under the same citations and rationale.
With respect to claims 23-24, they recite similar limitations as claims 1, 2, and 6, respectively, and are therefore rejected under the same citations and rationale.
Claim(s) 3 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bernat et al. (US 2020/0285523) in view of Gupta et al. (US 2016/0057041) further in view of Natu (US 2020/0065290).
With respect to claim 3, Bernat does not specifically disclose: wherein the interconnect is a Compute Express Link (CXL) interconnect, and wherein the physical resource is a CXL device that is accessible via a CXL root complex.
However, Natu discloses: wherein the interconnect is a Compute Express Link (CXL) interconnect, and wherein the physical resource is a CXL device that is accessible via a CXL root complex ([0014]).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate an industry high speed interconnect standard for Bernat’s computer bus as it provides high bandwidth, low latency and cache coherent connections between host processors and various devices like accelerators and memory devices. Its main advantage is addressing memory bottlenecks in data centers by enabling resource sharing and dynamic allocation.
With respect to claim 14, it recites similar limitations as claim 3 and is therefore rejected under the same citations and rationale.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to WISSAM RASHID whose telephone number is (571)270-3758. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8:00 am-5:00 pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Aimee Li can be reached at (571)272-4169. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/WISSAM RASHID/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2195
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