DETAILED ACTION
This office action is in response to amendment/arguments filed on 2/19/2026.
Claim 6 is amended.
Claims 8 – 9 are added.
Claims 1 – 9 are pending.
35 USC 101 rejection of claim 6 is withdrawn in view of the amendment.
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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1, 2, 4, 8 and 9 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Bhuiyan et al, “Energy-Efficient Real-Time Scheduling of DAG Tasks”, ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems, Vol. 17, No. 5, Article 84. Publication date: September 2018, pages 1 – 25 (prior art part of IDS dated 6/28/2023, hereinafter Bhuiyan).
As per claim 1, Bhuiyan discloses: A computer-implemented method of scheduling periodic real-time tasks on a multi-core processor, said tasks comprising sub-tasks and dependencies capable of representation by a directed acyclic graph, the method comprising:
decomposing a task into sub-tasks according to a directed-acyclic-graph representation of the task; (Bhuiyan page 6, section 3.1, 1st paragraph: “we adopt task decomposition as the first step that converts each node Nl i of the DAG task τi to an individual sub-task τ l i with a release offset (bl i ), deadline (f l i ), and execution requirement (cl i ).”)
generating a timing diagram assuming an infinite number of processor cores are available to process sub-tasks in parallel, said timing diagram representing execution of said sub-tasks on a schedule respecting any deadlines and dependencies of the sub-tasks defined by the directed-acyclic-graph; segmenting the timing diagram based on release times and deadlines of the sub-tasks, each segment including one or more parallel processing threads for execution, respectively, of at least part of a sub-task by a respective processor core; (Bhuiyan page 6, section 3.1, second paragraph – page 7, first paragraph: “we perform the task decomposition using the techniques in Saifullah et al. (2014) as described below. Assuming the execution of the task is on an unlimited number of cores, we draw a vertical line at every time instant where a node starts or ends for each node starting from the beginning. These vertical lines split the DAG into segments, and each segment consists of an equal amount of execution by the nodes that lie in the segment. Parts of different nodes in the same segment can now be considered as threads of execution that run in parallel, and the threads in a segment can start only after those in the preceding segment have finished their executions. Now we will say that the resulting segmented structure of the task is converted into synchronous form and will denote it as τ syn i . We first allot time to the segments and then add all times assigned to different segments of a node to calculate its allocated time.”.)
for each segment, dependent on a workload in the segment, deciding a frequency and/or voltage to be used by the processor core or cores to execute one or more parallel processing threads of the segment, said decision setting the decided processor-core frequency and/or voltage to reduce power consumption to an extent that still enables respecting of the sub-task deadlines; (Bhuiyan page 9, section 3.3, first paragraph: “After task decomposition and segment extension, we have identified the scheduling window [bl i , f l i ] for each node Nl i , and there is no overlap for any two windows (for different nodes) on the same processor. A natural question arises: Given a specific node (job) with a pre-determined scheduling window on a dedicated processor, what is the most energy-efficient execution (speed) pattern? Theorem 2. The total energy consumption (assuming processor remains on) a+Δ a s(t) γ dt is minimized in any scheduling window [a, a + Δ] of length Δ when execution speed remains the same; i.e., s(t) ≡ C/Δ, where C = a+Δ a s(t)dt is the (given) task demand in the window.”; page 10, second paragraph: “According to Theorem 2, executing all segments with a uniform speed yields minimum possible power consumption under such framework. Hence we can assume that the speed of any processor does not change within a segment. Let Sk j denote the speed of processor j in the kth segment (executing node Nl i ), and tk i denote the length of the segment. The objective is to determine the length of each segment tk i (≥ 0) and its execution speed Sk j (≥ 0) such that total power consumption is minimized”.)
and scheduling execution of the sub-tasks of the segments assuming the decided processor-core frequencies and/or voltages set in the deciding step. (Bhuiyan page 18, section 5, first paragraph: “In this section, we use experiments to evaluate the power efficiency of the proposed mechanisms, and compare them with existing algorithms for DAG task systems.”)
As per claim 2, Bhuiyan further teach:
The method of claim 1, wherein the scheduling of execution of the sub-tasks of the segments is performed using a global earliest deadline first algorithm. (Bhuiyan page 23, section 6, second paragraph: EDF.)
As per claim 4, it is the system variant of claim 1 and is therefore rejected under the same rationale.
As pe4 claim 8, Bhuiyan further discloses:
The method of claim 1, wherein segmenting the timing diagram based on release times and deadlines of the sub-tasks comprises dividing the timing diagram into segments delineated by periods between a location where each sub-task starts and the deadline of that sub-task. (Bhuiyan page 8, figure 5)
As per claim 9, it is the system variant of claim 8 and is therefore 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.
Claim(s) 5 – 7 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bhuiyan, in view of Bao et al (US 20180373540, hereinafter Bao).
As per claim 5, Bhuiyan did not disclose:
An edge server comprising the scheduling system of claim 4.
However, Bao teaches:
An edge server comprising the scheduling system of claim 4. (Bao [0079])
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teaching of Bao into that of Bhuiyan in order to have the scheduling system of claim 4 be implemented in an edge server. It is merely an obvious design choice to implement the scheduling system in an edge server compared to other servers, and is therefore rejected under 35 USC 103.
As per claim 6, Bhuiyan did not disclose:
A transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon a computer program which, when the program is executed by a processing unit of a computing apparatus, cause said processing unit to implement the method of claim 1.
However, Bao teaches:
A transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon a computer program which, when the program is executed by a processing unit of a computing apparatus, cause said processing unit to implement the method of claim 1. (Bao [0078])
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teaching of Bao into that of Bhuiyan in order to have transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon a computer program which, when the program is executed by a processing unit of a computing apparatus. Applicants have merely claimed the combination of known parts in the field to achieve predictable results and is therefore rejected under 35 USC 103.
As per claim 7, Bhuiyan did not disclose:
A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon instructions which, when executed by a processor of a computing apparatus, cause the processor to perform the method of claim 1.
However, Bao teaches:
A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon instructions which, when executed by a processor of a computing apparatus, cause the processor to perform the method of claim 1. (Bao [0078])
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teaching of Bao into that of Bhuiyan in order to have a non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon instructions which, when executed by a processor of a computing apparatus. Applicants have merely claimed the combination of known parts in the field to achieve predictable results and is therefore rejected under 35 USC 103.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 3 is 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.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 2/19/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Claim 1:
Applicant argued on pages 8 – 9 that Bhuiyan does not anticipate the claimed limitations of claim 1. More specifically, applicant argued on page 8, last paragraph that the instant claimed limitations requires “segmenting the timing diagram based on release times and deadline of the sub-task”, while Bhuiyan only teaches “dividing into segments by placing a vertical line in the timing diagram at each location where a sub-task starts or ends”.
The examiner disagrees. Referring to Bhuiyan at page 6 – 7, section 3 and 3.1, and figure 4, “we adopt task decomposition as the first step that converts each node Nli of the DAG task τi to an individual sub-task τli with a release offset (b li), deadline (f li), and execution requirement (c li). The release time and deadlines are assigned in a way that all dependencies (represented by edges in the DAG) are respected… we draw a vertical line at every time instant where a node starts or ends for each node starting from the beginning. These vertical lines split the DAG into segments, and each segment consists of an equal amount of execution by the nodes that lie in the segment… As a result, the beginning of the node will be the latest finishing time of its parent(s)—these are boundaries of the segments, denoted by vertical lines in Figure 4.”. Examiner notes that with reference to figure 4, it can be clearly seen that the segments are based on each task’s starting time (claimed release time) and end time (claimed deadline), with the starting time of a task being the end time of the preceding task. Bhuiyan does anticipates the claimed limitations of claim 1 in full.
Rest of the claims:
No distinct arguments are made.
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 CHARLES M SWIFT whose telephone number is (571)270-7756. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday: 9:30 AM - 7PM.
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/CHARLES M SWIFT/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2196
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