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 .
Claims 1-20 are pending.
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.
Claim 11 recites the limitation "the processing module" in line 2. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
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, 14, 17, 18, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lary et al. (US 5386524) in view of Deisher et al. (US 2018/0121796).
With respect to claim 1, Lary discloses: A processor to: receive a task to be executed, the task comprising a task-based parameter associated with the task, for use in determining a position, within an array of data descriptors, of a particular data descriptor of a particular portion of data to be processed in executing the task, wherein each of the data descriptors in the array of data descriptors is indicative of a location in a storage system of a respective portion of data (col. 4, lines 15-54, where “a command specifying a data transaction” corresponds to Applicant’s “task”, “relative starting position” corresponds to Applicant’s “task-based parameter…for use in determining a position”, “array of buffer descriptor” in col. 4, lines 5-15 corresponds to Applicant’s “array of data descriptors”);
derive, based on the task, array location data indicative of a location in the storage system of a predetermined data descriptor of the array (col 4, lines 22-24, using the buffer name included in the command, the adapter obtains a buffer descriptor leaf table (BDLT) index field to index into the leaf table and access a BDLT entry, i.e., a buffer descriptor leaf pointer);
obtain the particular data descriptor from the storage system, based on the array location data and the task-based parameter (col. 4, lines 24-30, the BDL pointer identifies appropriate BDL structure from among many similar structures);
obtain the particular portion of data from the storage system, based on the particular data descriptor (col. 4, lines 31-37, the buffer descriptor includes address pointers and offsets to the named data buffer which are used by the adapter to access the data locations in the named buffer); and
process the particular portion of data in executing the task (col. 5, lines 1-3).
Lary does not specifically disclose: array has a predetermined size.
Deisher discloses: array has a predetermined size ([0120]).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate Deisher’s predetermined sized array in Lary’s array of data descriptors because fixed sized/static sized arrays offer fast and efficient element access due to their contiguous memory allocation in constant time, as the retrieval time does not depend on the array size making operations using frequent element access highly efficient.
With respect to claim 2, Lary discloses: wherein the processor is to execute a plurality of tasks comprising the task, each task comprising processing of a different respective portion of data, each respective portion of data represented by a data descriptor at a different respective position within the array, and the task-based parameter is representative of the position within the array of the particular data descriptor of the particular portion of data to be processed in executing the task (col. 2, lines 25-29).
With respect to claim 14, Lary discloses: wherein the task comprises program location data indicative of a location in the storage system of a compiled program to be executed by the processor in executing the task (col. 4, line 25, BDL-PTR is a pointer. Examiner takes Official Notice that a pointer is a fundamental concept in program languages that is handled by a compiler during the compilation process).
With respect to claim 17 and 18, they recite similar limitations as claims 1 and 2, respectively, and are therefore rejected under the same citations and rationale.
With respect to claim 20, it recites similar limitations as claim 1 and is therefore rejected under the same citations and rationale.
Claim(s) 11-13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lary et al. (US 5386524) in view of Deisher et al. (US 2018/0121796) further in view of Kadri et a. (US 2023/0072082)
With respect to claim 11, Lary and Deisher do not specifically disclose: wherein the particular portion of data is a particular portion of compressed data, and the processing module is to decompress the particular portion of data obtained from the storage system.
However, Kadri discloses: wherein the particular portion of data is a particular portion of compressed data, and the processing module is to decompress the particular portion of data obtained from the storage system ([0075]).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Kardi’s compressed/uncompressed data techniques for reduced storage space, faster file transfer, and lower costs due to less storage and bandwidth requirements of compressed data.
With respect to claim 12, Kadri discloses: wherein the task comprises at least a portion of a neural processing operation (Fig. 1, [0044]).
With respect to claim 13, Kadri discloses: wherein the particular portion of data comprises weight data representing neural network weights ([0045]).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 3-10, 15, 16, and 19 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
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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