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 office action is in response to submission of application on 3/20/2023.
Claims 1-20 are presented for examination.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1-2, 4-12, and 14-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Step 1: Is the claim to a process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter?
Claims 1-10 are directed to a method (i.e., a process); and claims 11-20 are directed to a non-transitory storage medium (i.e., a manufacture); therefore, all claims are directed to one of the four statutory categories of invention.
Step 2A: Prong 1: Does the claim recite an abstract idea, law of nature, or natural phenomenon?
Claim 1 recites limitations of:
extracting features from a quantum circuit and subcircuits of the quantum circuit – mental process (observation, evaluation, judgement) as a human mind can identify features of a quantum circuit. The specification recites “The features may include the total number of CNOTs that connect qubit i with other qubits, the number of types of 1-qubit gates on a current qubit i, and the like.”(Specification, paragraph [0020], line 2.).
predict a sparsity index for each of the subcircuits and for the quantum circuit – mental process (observation, evaluation, judgement) as a human mind can predict a sparsity index.
determining an estimate of a computational overhead of a knitting operation based on the predicted sparsity indexes – mental process (observation, evaluation, judgement) as a human mind can estimate the computational overhead of a knitting operation.
Step 2A: Prong 2: Does the claim recite additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application?
Claim 1 recites the additional elements of:
running the features through a recurrent model – inputting data into a recurrent model with no description of the model is insignificant, extra-solution activity. See MPEP 2106.05(g).
The additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application.
Step 2B: Does the claim recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception?
The additional elements are:
running the features through a recurrent model – inputting data into a recurrent model with no description of the model is insignificant, extra-solution activity. See MPEP 2106.05(g). Transmitting data is well-understood, routine, and conventional. See MPEP 2106.05(d)(II)(i).
The additional elements do not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea. Therefore, the claim is not patent eligible.
Independent claim 11 recites the same relevant limitations and a similar analysis applies. Claim 11 recites the additional elements of “A non-transitory storage medium having stored therein instructions that are executable by one or more hardware processors to perform operations” – components recited at a high level are construed as generic computer components used to implement the abstract idea. See MPEP 2106.05(f)(2). They do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. Nor do they amount to significantly more. Therefore, the independent claims are not patent eligible.
The above analysis similarly applies to the dependent claims.
Claims 2 and 12 recite the additional elements of “cutting the quantum circuit based on the sparsity indexes to generate the cut circuits” – mental process (observation, evaluation, judgement) as a human mind can partition a quantum circuit based on sparsity indexes.
Claims 4 and 14 recite the additional elements of “the quantum circuits includes w qubits” – mere description of the data, as such, it merely identifies a technology or field of use. See MPEP 2106.05(h); and “the subcircuits of the quantum circuit include a subcircuit i that includes i qubits from i = 1 to i = w” – description of the output of the mental process. This merely identifies a technology or field of use. See MPEP 2106.05(h).
Claims 5 and 15 recite the additional elements of “training the recurrent model using a database of quantum circuits using features extracted from the quantum circuits and
using sparse indexes generated by running the quantum circuits” – training a machine learning model, without a description of the model is merely identifying a generic machine learning model used to perform the abstract idea. See MPEP 2106.05(f)(1).
Claims 6 and 16 recite the additional elements of “running features of a first subcircuit through a first unit to predict a first sparsity index and a first hidden state” – reciting the output of a machine learning model without a description of the is effectively feeding data to a black box and adding the words “apply it”. See MPEP 2106.05(f)(3).
Claims 7 and 17 recite the additional elements of “inputting features of a second subcircuit and a first hidden state into a second unit” – inputting data is insignificant, extra-solution activity. See MPEP 2106.05(g). Transmitting data is well-understood, routine, and conventional. See MPEP 2106.05(d)(II)(i); and “predict a second sparsity index of the second subcircuit and a second hidden state, wherein corresponding units predict sparsity indexes for the subcircuits of the quantum circuit” – mental process (observation, evaluation, judgement) as a huma mind can predict a sparsity index.
Claims 8 and 18 recite the additional elements of “the features include a number of CNOT gates that connect a qubit with other qubits, a number of types of 1-qubit gates for a current qubit, and number of qubits of a current subcircuit” – description of the input merely identifies a field of use. See MPEP 2106.05(h).
Claims 9 and 19 recite the additional elements of “estimating or correcting an estimate of computational overhead based on:
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wherein k is a number of cuts, nc is a number of subcircuits, fi is a number of qubits in every subcircuit acted upon during knitting, and si is a predicted sparsity index” – describing a formula used for estimating the computational overhead. Mathematical concepts (relationships, formulas or equations, calculations).
Claims 10 and 20 recite the additional elements of “sorting the subcircuits based on the sparsity indexes to simplify multiplication” – mental process (observation, evaluation, judgement) as a human mind can sort subcircuits based on sparsity indexes.
The dependent claims do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application, nor do they amount to significantly more than the abstract idea. Therefore, claims 1-2, 4-12, and 14-20 are not patent eligible.
Allowable Subject Matter
The claims have been searched but no prior art which anticipates or renders the independent claims obvious have been found.
Claims 3 and 13 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
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Tang, et al, “Cutting Quantum Circuits to Run on Quantum and Classical Platforms”
Tang, et al, “ScaleQC: A Scalable Framework for Hybrid Computation on Quantum and Classical Processors*”
You, et al “GraphRNN: Generating Realistic Graphs with Deep Auto-regressive Models”
Goswami, et al “Sparsity measure of a network graph: Gini index”
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/Bart I Rylander/Examiner, Art Unit 2124