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 reply to communication filed on 07/17/2023.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 03/04/2024 and 10/15/2024 was filed after the mailing date of the original application filed on 07/17/2023. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bloch et al., US 20170063613 A1, in view of Colligan et al., US 20200322694 A1.
Regarding claim 1, Bloch teaches an apparatus comprising: an interface and circuitry coupled to the interface, the circuitry configured to: for packet communications associated with a collective operation to train machine learning (ML) models (0008, 0010,-0018, 0052): utilize a reliable transport protocol for communications from at least one worker node of the collective operation to a switch, wherein the utilize a reliable transport protocol (0051, and 0057) for communications from at least one worker node of the collective operation to the switch comprises store packet receipt state for per-packet communications from the at least one worker node of the collective operation to the switch (0063-0065, 0075-0084, and 0088-0093) and utilize a non-reliable transport protocol by the switch to a device that is to perform aggregation of results, wherein the reliable transport protocol comprises a different protocol than that of the non-reliable transport protocol (0098-0100).
Bloch does not expressly disclose, in the claimed arrangement, using the non-reliable transport between the switch and the device that performs the aggregation. In the same field of invention, Colligan teaches that network communications conventionally employ both unreliable and reliable transport protocols, expressly UDP and TCP, respectively, and explains that reliable TCP provides retransmission in response to dropped/errored transmissions (see Colligan, par. 0032). Colligan additionally teaches ML/neural-network training using network-derived information (0035, 0038-0040).
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify Bloch’s aggregation network to employ the known unreliable transport (UDP) on communication where reliable per-packed delivery/state was unnecessary, while retaining reliable transport (TCP or Bloch’s equivalent) on communications requiring reliable packet delivery/state, as taught by Colligan. The combination represents a predictable selection of known transport protocols according to their unknown characteristics. Doing the reliable transport where retransmission/delivery assurance is desired and unreliable transport where such overhead is unnecessary thereby reducing transport/retransmission overhead while retaining reliability where needed. Bloch itself already teaches coexistence of reliable and unreliable transports making Colligan’s TCP/UDP implementation a predictable substitution of known equivalents.
2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the reliable transport protocol comprises one or more of: remote direct memory access (RDMA), InfiniBand, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), quick UDP Internet Connections (QUIC), or RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) (Colligan, par. 0032).
3. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the utilize the reliable transport protocol for communications from at least one worker node of the collective operation to the switch comprises cause transmission of packet receipt acknowledgement (ACK) messages to the at least one worker node based on non-receipt of a packet (Bloch, par. 0059).
4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the non-reliable transport protocol comprises User Datagram Protocol (UDP) (Bloch, par. 0032).
5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the utilize a non-reliable transport protocol comprises track receipt of packet transmissions by the switch to a device that is to perform aggregation of results is based on receipt of aggregation of results from a root switch that includes identifiers of contents of the packet transmissions by the switch to the device (Bloch, par. 0016).
The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the circuitry is to cause re-transmission of a packet, associated with an identifier not received from the device, by the switch to the device (Bloch, par. 0017).
The apparatus of claim 1, comprising a switch system on chip (SoC), wherein the switch SoC includes the interface and the circuitry. The Examiner takes the Official notice that using System on chip (SOC) in the context of the invention is well-known in the art (see Olson et al, US 12086095 B2, column 25, lines 55-67; fig 15, item 1500).
8. At least one non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions stored thereon, that if executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to: configure a first network interface device to utilize a reliable transport protocol for communications from at least one worker node of the collective operation to the first network interface device (Bloch, 0008, 0010,-0018, 0052), wherein the utilize a reliable transport protocol for communications from at least one worker node of the collective operation to the first network interface device(Bloch, 0051, and 0057) comprises store packet receipt state for per-packet communications from at least one worker node of the collective operation to the first network interface device and configure the first network interface device to utilize a non-reliable transport protocol for communications to a second network interface device that is to perform aggregation of results (Bloch; 0063-0065, 0075-0084, and 0088-0093), wherein the reliable transport protocol comprises a different protocol than that of the non-reliable transport protocol (Bloch; 0098-0100; see also Colligan; 0032, 0035, 0038-0040). The same motivation and reason to combine used for the rejection of claim 1 is also valid for this claim.
9. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 8, wherein the reliable transport protocol comprises one or more of: remote direct memory access (RDMA), InfiniBand, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), quick UDP Internet Connections (QUIC), or RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) (Colligan, par. 0032).
10. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 8, wherein the utilize a reliable transport protocol for communications from at least one worker node of the collective operation to the first network interface device comprises cause transmission of packet receipt acknowledgement (ACK) messages to the at least one worker node based on non-receipt of a packet (Bloch, par. 0059).
11. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 8, wherein the non-reliable transport protocol comprises User Datagram Protocol (UDP) (Bloch, par. 0032).
12. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 8, wherein the utilize a non- reliable transport protocol comprises track receipt of packet transmissions by the first network interface device to the second network interface device is based on receipt of aggregation of results from a root switch that includes identifiers of contents of the packet transmissions by the switch to the device.
13. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 8, wherein the first network interface device is to re-transmit a packet, associated with an identifier not received from the second network interface device, to the second network interface device (Bloch, par. 0017).
14. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 8, comprising instructions stored thereon, that if executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to: configure multiple network interface devices to perform collective operations to train machine learning (ML) models by associating logical nodes with the multiple network interface devices (see Olson et al, US 12086095 B2, column 25, lines 55-67; fig 15, item 1500).
15. A method comprising: a first network interface device utilizing a reliable transport protocol for communications from at least one worker node of the collective operation to the first network interface device, wherein the utilize reliable transport protocol for communications from at least one worker node of the collective operation to the first network interface device (Bloch, 0008, 0010,-0018, 0052) comprises store packet receipt state for per-packet communications from the at least one worker node of the collective operation to the first network interface device and the first network interface device utilizing a non-reliable transport protocol (Bloch. 0051, and 0057) for communications to a second network interface device that is to perform aggregation of results at least one worker node (Bloch; 0063-0065, 0075-0084, and 0088-0093), wherein the reliable transport protocol comprises a different protocol than that of the non-reliable transport protocol (Bloch; 0098-0100; see also Colligan; 0032, 0035, 0038-0040). The same motivation and reason to combine used for the rejection of claim 1 is also valid for this claim.
16. The method of claim 15, wherein the reliable transport protocol comprises one or more of: remote direct memory access (RDMA), InfiniBand, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), quick UDP Internet Connections (QUIC), or RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) (Colligan, par. 0032).
17. The method of claim 15, wherein the utilizing a reliable transport protocol for communications from at least one worker node of the collective operation to the first network interface device comprises transmitting packet receipt acknowledgement (ACK) messages to the at least one worker node based on non-receipt of a packet (Bloch, par. 0059).
18. The method of claim 15, wherein the non-reliable transport protocol comprises User Datagram Protocol (UDP) (Bloch, par. 0032).
19. The method of claim 15, wherein the utilizing a non-reliable transport protocol comprises tracking receipt of packet transmissions by the first network interface device to the second network interface device based on receipt of aggregation of results from a root switch that includes identifiers of contents of the packet transmissions by the switch to the device (Bloch, par. 0017).
20. The method of claim 15, comprising: the first network interface device causing re-transmission of a packet, associated with an identifier not received from the second network interface device, to the second network interface device (see Olson et al, US 12086095 B2, column 25, lines 55-67; fig 15, item 1500).
CONCLUSION
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Jude Jean-Gilles whose telephone number is 571-272-3914. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Fri, from 9:00AM-5:00PM.
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/JUDE JEAN GILLES/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2459
August 20, 2026
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