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 .
Applicant’s arguments with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 1-20 under 35 USC 102 have been considered, but are moot in view of the new ground of rejection.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claim(s) 1, 3-9, 11-17 and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Butler US PGPUB 20220197773 in view of Ranganath et. Al. (Ranganath), US PG PUB 2024025879.
Regarding claim 1, 9 and 17, Butler discloses the invention substantially as claimed. Butler discloses a method comprising: receiving, by processor, a request for inventory data from a slice manager (Butler [0464] A multi-tenant orchestrator may be used to perform key management, trust anchor management, and other security functions related to the provisioning and lifecycle of the trusted 'slice' concept in Figure 32. An orchestrator may use a DICE layering and fan-out construction to create a root of trust context that is tenant specific. Thus, orchestration functions 3340, provided by an orchestrator, and participate as a tenant-specific orchestration provider. Butler [0189] teaches "The resource inventory data identifies an inventory of resources that are available to add to the computing infrastructure during the particular time window, which may be obtained from a resource inventory catalog. For example, the resource inventory catalog may identify resources that are available to request or order for inclusion in the computing infrastructure during the relevant time window, along with any such resources that have already been requested and will become available sometime during the time window Butler [0510] Application circuitry 4105 includes circuitry such as, to one or more processors (or processor cores),); requesting, by the processor, the inventory data from one or more system inventories (Butler, para. 0189); receiving, by the processor, the requested inventory data from an inventory (Butler (para. 0189) The resource inventory data identifies an inventory of resources that are available to add to the computing infrastructure during the particular time window, which may be obtained from a resource inventory catalog. For example, the resource inventory catalog may identify resources that are available to request or order for inclusion in the computing infrastructure during the relevant time window, along with any such resources that have already been requested and will become available sometime during the time window, Butler [0510] Application circuitry 4105 includes circuitry such as, but not limited to one or more processors (or processor cores),); and sending, by the processor, the translated requested data (para [0160] "The third step involves quantification of service-to-resource mappings using a load translator 730. For example, based on the infrastructure capacity information from the resource modeler 720, along with the usage patterns and service level objectives (SLOs) from the collector subsystem 710, a load translator 730 determines and quantifies potential mappings of services to resources in order to compare, contrast, and tradeoff various placement options. The quantification can be based on cost utility functions that provide a notion of how optimal the particular mapping is able to perform Butler [0510] Application circuitry 4105 includes circuitry such as, but not limited to one or more processors (or processor cores),). Even though, Butler does disclose a load translator. However, Butler does not explicitly disclose the process of translating, by the processor, the requested inventory data into a slice manager data model; wherein the translating comprises: mapping at least one slice identification associated with the requested inventory data to a specific slide identifier (ID) associated with the slice manager data model of the slide manager
Accordingly, in the same field or endeavor, Ranganath discloses translating, by the processor, the requested inventory data into a slice manager data model (para. 0068, 0069, 0341, 0481); wherein the translating comprises: mapping at least one slice identification associated with the requested inventory data to a specific slide identifier (ID) associated with the slice manager data model of the slice manager (0481)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to have incorporated Ranganath’s teachings of resource management through collection and analysis for edge computing, cloud computing, network communication, data centers, edge computing (Ranganath, para.0002) with the teachings of Butler. As Ranganath states the following example implementations generally related to edge computing, cloud computing, network communication, data centers, network topologies, communication systems, telemetry and telemetering systems, telemetry awareness and intelligence in managing telemetering systems, Radio Access Network (RAN) and RAN intelligent controller (RIC) implementations. In particular, the present disclosure provides RIC-based resource management mechanisms for individual RIC applications, where the resource management for the individual RIC applications is based on the collection and analysis of platform telemetry data as well as measurements collected by user equipment and access network infrastructure element (Ranganath, para. 0023). Furthermore, with regards to the limitations of a processor (Butler, para. 0051) a memory having instructions stored (Butler, para. 0050), non-transitory computer readable medium (Butler, para.0416). The same motivation that was utilizing in claim 1 applies equally as well to each dependent claim listed.
Regarding claim 3, 11, and 19, Butler-Ranganath discloses the method of claim 1, and Butler further teaches wherein the requesting for the inventory data from the one or more system inventories comprises: periodically requesting the inventory data from the one or more system inventories ( Butler [0215] Systems will continuously or periodically (block 1320) look out for their own capabilities (e.g., capable of hosting docker containers, VMS, and so forth) and current available capacities (e.g., available number of available cores, free memory, and so forth, or aggregated metrics from telemetry, such as utilization levels and so forth) (block 1302).
Regarding claim 4, 12, and 20, Butler-Ranganath discloses the method of claim 1, and Butler-Ranganath further teaches wherein the requesting for the inventory data from the one or more system inventories comprises: requesting on demand the inventory data from the one or more system inventories (Butler [0116] The flowchart then proceeds to block 514, where the edge compute node receives load information for the other peer compute nodes on the local network. In various embodiments, for example, all edge compute nodes on the local network may broadcast or report their current load status to each other, either periodically or on demand).
Regarding claims 5 and 13, Butler-Ranganath discloses the method of claim 1, and Butler-Ranganath discloses further comprising deploying a network slice based on the translated request data, wherein the network slice is a multi-domain network slice (Butler [0200-0203, 0263] "For example, based on the information noted above, the two placement algorithms are run in parallel to compute all, or a subset, of the possible placement options at the current time point as well as future time points. Algorithm 1 identifies the best placement options by processing the data pertaining to current resources, such as inventories, availability, capacity, and incoming workloads. Algorithm 2 considers a set of hypothetical placement options by analyzing workload performance on predicted resources, such as inventories, availability, and capacity at future time points, and with the current workloads).
Regarding claims 6 and 14, Butler-Ranganath discloses the method of claim 1, and Butler-Ranganath further discloses comprising: mapping, by the processor, the model (Butler [0160, 0188]-[0189] The service-to-resource placement options identify possible placements of the respective services or workloads across the respective resources of the computing infrastructure over the particular time window. For example, the placement options may Identify possible mappings of the underlying tasks and dependencies of the services to the resources of the computing infrastructure, which may be determined based on the service requirements and the available capacities of the infrastructure resources. The flowchart then proceeds to block 1108 to obtain resource inventory data for the computing infrastructure. The resource inventory data identifies an inventory of resources that are available to add to the computing infrastructure during the particular time window, which may be obtained from a resource inventory catalog).
Regarding claims 7 and 15, Butler-Ranganath discloses the method of claim 1, Butler-Ranganath discloses further comprising: identifying, by the processor, one or more vendors that is storing the inventory data in a system inventory; and requesting, by the processor, the inventory data based on the identification (Butler [0504] "Normally, a vendor of a computing platform is responsible for producing feature changes or security patches that apply to deployed platforms. A vendor typically does not enable other supply chain entities to develop firmware updates and/or allow another entity to apply them. When a workload is dissected and distributed across a 'slice' or 'flavor' of resources spanning multiple platforms and therefore multiple administrators and vendors, considerations may be made on whether the user and orchestrator have enough control over which versions of what software/firmware).
Regarding claims 8 and 16, Butler-Ranganath discloses the method of claim 1, and Butler-Ranganath further teaches comprising: scheduling, by the processor, one or more system inventory APIs to schedule data translations for one or more utilities (Butler [0057] At the operating system (OS) level, various scheduler algorithms exist to balance CPU-centric tasks, particularly with respect to multi-core architectures. These load balancing approaches are generally designed to work at a fixed point in the pipeline of an end-to-end application " and Butler [0542] teaches "The OSS may also include one or more libraries, drivers, APIs ").
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2, 10 and 18 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. None of the prior art of record discloses storing, by the processor, the translated requested data in a persistent storage; and providing, by the processor, the translated requested data in the persistent storage to the slice manager, wherein the slice manager is independently operable of the at least one of the one or more system inventories for a predefined time period based on the stored translated requested data.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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 WILLIAM C VAUGHN JR whose telephone number is (571)272-3922. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday, 8:30am-5:00pm.
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/WILLIAM C VAUGHN JR/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2481