DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the. Claims 1-11 are pending. The examiner attempted to contact the applicant with regard to allowable amendments for the claims, however, the examiner was not able to reach the applicant. In the interest of facilitate compact prosecution the examiner invites the applicant to contact the examiner to discuss the allowable amendments.
Specification
The title of the invention is not descriptive. A new title is required that is clearly indicative of the invention to which the claims are directed.
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.
Claim 11 is also rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter since it is an apparatus claim that include a " apparatus for managing memory, comprising: at least one virtual machine memory management module, at least one virtual machine manager, a virtual PCIe device integrated in the virtual machine manager, and a host memory management module, wherein the virtual machine memory management module and the virtual machine manager both correspond to a virtual machine". However, the specification is silent on what the apparatus and its modules can be. Under broadest reasonable consideration, this apparatus and its modules can all be software components and is therefore considered to be software per se. Software per se does not fall into any of the four categories of patent eligibility (MPEP 2106.03 I). Therefore, claim 11 is non-statutory.
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.
Claims 1-11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which applicant regards as the invention.
The following claim languages are not clear and indefinite:
As per claims 1 and 11, it is not clear if the components of “virtual machine memory management module”, “virtual machine manager”, “virtual PCIe device” and “host management module” are all part of the “virtual machine” or somewhere else. Are these components all unique to the “virtual machine” or they are shared by one or more other virtual machines or programs.
It is not clear if the “memory space allocated by the host memory management module” is memory located on a PCIe device that corresponds to the “virtual PCIe device”; or is the “virtual PCIe device” used to allocate memory space located on a host computing system.
The dependent claims do not cure the 112(b) issues of their respective parent claims. Therefore, they are rejected for the same reasons as those presented for their respective parent claims.
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.
Claims 1, 10 and 11 are rejected under 103 as being unpatentable over Olderdissen (U.S. Pub. 2019/0370043) in view of Niu et al (WO 2017181853A1).
As per claim 1 Olderdissen teaches the invention substantially as claimed including a method for managing memory ([0022]), comprising:
while a virtual machine is running, receiving, by a virtual machine memory management module, a memory allocation request sent by a user process in the virtual machine ([0032], [0039] some later point in its operation, VM may request different memory allocation based on needs of an application running on VM; the needs are determined/received by a memory usage manager of the VM); sending, by the virtual machine memory management module according to the memory allocation request sent by the user process, the memory allocation request to a virtualized controller in a virtual machine manager to enable the virtualized controller to request memory from a host memory management module ([0041], [0057], [0080], [0096]-[0100], Fig. 1 and 7 memory usage manager of the VM communicates memory allocation requests to a hypervisor, the requests are handled by virtualized controller of the hypervisor, which manages storage and I/O of a host system; and allocation of host memory are done via memory space manager that manages storage pools of the host computing system: [0065]); and
acquiring, by the virtual machine memory management module via the virtualized controller, a memory space allocated by the host memory management module and configuring the memory space to the user process ([0043], [0045], [0046], [0040]; [0100] memory space manager prepares appropriate, through virtualized controller (since it is handles storage and I/O activities of a hypervisor), storage pool and returns location of allocated to the requesting virtual machine through memory usage manager of the virtual machine).
Olderdissen does not explicitly teach that the virtualized controller that manages storage and I/O can be a virtual PCIe device.
However, Niu explicitly teach that the virtualized controller that manages storage and I/O can be a virtual PCIe device (translated pgs. 7-9 SRIOV function of a PCIE device is used to manage memory pool allocation).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the prior to the effective filling date of the invention to combine the teachings of Niu and Olderdissen because both are directed towards dynamic allocation of memory. One with ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to incorporate the teachings of Niu into that of Olderdissen because Niu further improves dynamism, security, performance, cost and maintainability of dynamic allocation of memory (translated pg. 9).
As per claim 10 Olderdissen teaches wherein the memory space allocated by the host memory management module comprises at least part of a heterogeneous memory ([0038], [0065]).
As per claim 11 it is a system version of method claim 1. Therefore, it is rejected for the same reasons, mutatis mutandis, as those presented for claim 1. In particular Olderdissen also teaches wherein the virtual machine memory management module and the virtual machine manager both correspond to a virtual machine (Fig. 1, 3 and 7 each VM has its own memory usage manager and is managed by a corresponding hypervisor).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-9 would be allowable if rewritten to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action and to include 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 BING ZHAO whose telephone number is (571)270-1745. The examiner can normally be reached 9:30am - 6pm.
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/BING ZHAO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2151