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 .
DETAILED ACTION
This communication is responsive to Amendment filed 1/20/2026.
In Amendment, no claims are cancelled and no claims are added. Thus, claims 1-20 are pending in this application. This Office Action is made final.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1-20 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection necessitated by Amendment.
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 1-3, 7-14 and 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Benedict (US 2016/0077751) in view of Nyland (US 2009/0240895).
As per claim 1, Benedict discloses a transaction merging method, for a first electronic device and a second electronic device, comprising:
(a) receiving a plurality of input transactions from the first electronic device (Paragraph 26 “The memory controller 202 also includes a work flow manager 208. The work flow manager 208 analyzes the extracted location information to determine the row of the memory 204 to which the received request refers. The work flow manager 208 also determines if a request to access the row to which the received request refers is present in the work flow 206. If a request to access the same row is present in the work flow 206, the work flow manager 208 coalesces the received request with the request in the work flow 206 to form a single request to access the row.”);
(c) merging the input transactions according to the merge condition to generate at least one transaction group (Paragraph 41 “The method also includes determining if a request to access the memory row is present in a memory controller work flow. The method further includes coalescing a received request with the request in the memory controller work flow to form a single request to access the memory row.”); and
(d) transmitting the transaction group to the second electronic device (Paragraph 44 “The work flow can include pipelined memory access requests. The memory controller can reorder data from the memory row to comply with system ordering rules. The work flow manager can coalesce memory access requests to decrease memory activation. The memory access requests can be reordered to coalesce the requests. The memory can include dynamic random access memory (DRAM) including a plurality of memory modules.”).
Benedict does not expressly disclose but Nyland discloses (b) for input transactions of the plurality of input transactions which correspond to continuous access regions of the target electronic device (Abstract “a technique for efficiently and flexibly performing coalesced memory accesses for a thread group. For each read application request that services a thread group, the core interface generates one pending request table (PRT) entry and one or more memory access requests. The core interface determines the number of memory access requests and the size of each memory access request based on the spread of the memory access addresses in the application request. Each memory access request specifies the particular threads that the memory access request services. The PRT entry tracks the number of pending memory access requests.”), setting a merge condition of the input transactions according to a transmission condition between the first electronic device and the second electronic device (Paragraph 54 “The invention coalesces (combines) multiple accesses to addresses in the same memory block into one memory access request per block. As is well known, a load memory instruction reads data from memory at a specified address, a store memory instruction writes data to memory at a specified address, and an atomic instruction both reads and writes memory at a specified address. Each thread in the thread group includes a thread ID 402 and a memory access address 404. While executing the threads, the core interface 303 may read data using the memory interface 214, write data using the memory interface 214, or any combination thereof in order to execute a particular memory instruction. For example, while executing a thread corresponding to a particular thread ID 402, the core interface 303 may read data from the corresponding memory access address 404 or write data to the corresponding memory access address 404. Alternatively, while executing a thread corresponding to a particular thread ID 402, the core interface 303 may read data from the corresponding memory access address 404, modify the data, and write the modified data to the corresponding memory access address 404.), the merge condition indicating how many input transactions in a transaction group (Abstract “The core interface determines the number of memory access requests and the size of each memory access request based on the spread of the memory access addresses in the application request.”).
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method of Benedict to include the teachings of Nyland because it provides for the purpose of increasing the overall performance of the executing application program by flexibly performing coalesced memory accesses for a thread group.
As per claim 2, Benedict further discloses wherein the merge condition is a size of a merge window of the input transactions (Paragraph 12 “By comparing an incoming request to access an address in a memory row of address spaces, requests to access the memory row can be coalesced to form a single request to access the memory row. As a result, activation of the memory row can be decreased. Because activation of the memory row is decreased, failures related to repeated activation are also decreased.” That is, the size of the row is analogous to the size of the merge window.).
As per claim 3, Benedict does not expressly disclose by Nyland discloses wherein the merge condition indicates each transaction group only comprises one input transaction (Abstract “For each read application request that services a thread group, the core interface generates one pending request table (PRT) entry and one or more memory access requests.”).
As per claim 7, Benedict further discloses wherein the input transactions are read commands or write commands for a target electronic device which is controlled by the second electronic device (Paragraph 20).
As per claim 8, Benedict further discloses wherein the access regions are addresses (Paragraphs 8-12).
As per claim 9, Benedict further discloses wherein the second electronic device is a DRAM controller for controlling a DRAM (Paragraphs 8-12).
As per claim 10, Benedict further discloses wherein the input transactions are transactions of an AR channel or an AW channel of the DRAM (Paragraph 15).
As per claims 11-14 and 18-20, they are system claims having similar limitations as cited in claims 1-3 and 7-10 and are rejected under the same rationale.
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 4-6 and 15-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Benedict in view of Nyland in further view of Hughes (US 2009/0049256).
As per claim 4, Benedict does not expressly disclose but Hughes discloses wherein the transmission condition is a bandwidth condition of a target device controlled by the second electronic device (Paragraphs 7-8 and 28).
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to modify the method of Benedict to include the teachings of Hughes because it provides of the purpose of efficiently managing requests. In this way, the combination benefits from the increased speed of processing transactions.
As per claim 5, Benedict does not expressly disclose but Hughes discloses wherein the transmission condition is a latency sensitivity level of the input transactions (Paragraphs 7-8 and 28).
As per claim 6, Benedict does not expressly disclose but Hughes discloses wherein the transmission condition is a type of the input transactions (Paragraphs 7-8 and 28).
As per claims 15-17, they are system claims having similar limitations as cited in claims 4-6 and are rejected under the same rationale.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TIMOTHY A MUDRICK whose telephone number is (571)270-3374. The examiner can normally be reached 9am-5pm Central Time.
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/TIMOTHY A MUDRICK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2198 3/16/2026