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 .
In response to the restriction requirement, Applicant elected claims 1, 6, 10, 12, 13, 15, and 19 for further examination. As a result, claims 2-5, 7-9, 11, 14, 16-18, and 20 are withdrawn from further prosecution.
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 13 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because:
The claim recites the sequence of grouping multiple threads into groups and executing a group for each column in a raster plane to form an associated histogram. This step sequence as analyzed can “practically be performed in the Human Mind” with/without sketching on paper. As stated in MPEP 2106.04(a)(2), III. Mental Processes, “A claim that encompasses a Human Performing the step(s) mentally with or without a physical aid recites a mental process”; as a result, the claim recites a mental process that falls within at least one of the abstract idea groupings (MPEP 2106.04(a) Abstract Ideas: The enumerated groupings of abstract ideas: Mathematical concepts, Certain methods of organizing human activity, Mental processes). As a result, the claim recites a judicial exception.
The claim, in addition, contains additional steps or actions of digitalizing input data and rasterizing it into a raster plane for storing purpose, and displaying the generated histogram. These additional steps/actions do no more than add insignificant extra-solution to the judicial exception and do not amount significant more to add an inventive concept to the claim.
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.
Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being incomplete for omitting essential steps, such omission amounting to a gap between the steps. See MPEP § 2172.01.
The claim recites the action of executing a common instruction per thread group of the first type to populate the raster plane without further relating this action to the formation of the batch histogram. It is also unclear when/how the formation of the batch histogram is completed.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claims 1 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the enablement requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to enable one skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and/or use the invention.
Regarding to the limitation that executing a common instruction per thread group to populate the raster plane with data from the digitalized waveform to form a batch histogram, the Specification, as filed, simply states “The 32 threads within a column would populate the column pixel positions with 32 samples, wherever those samples reside. Further waveform processing will populate the samples in the column that have ‘hit’ or data”, without further clearly relating/explaining how to form the batch histogram from there. As a result, one of ordinary skill in art would not know how to make/use the claimed invention.
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) 1, 10, 12-13, and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Letts (US 2016/0293144) in view of Honda (US 2021/0383499).
Regarding to claims 1, 13:
Letts discloses a test and measurement instrument, comprising:
an acquisition system configured to receive and digitize a batch of waveforms from a
device under test (DUT) into a batch of digitized waveforms (FIG. 2 and paragraph [0013]: Digitizer 202 digitizes the input data. FIG. 5, step 502: Acquire and digitize input data);
a memory configured as a raster plane having rows and columns (paragraph [0019]: A rasterizer plane may be 512 x 1024 bytes, and comprises multiple pixels arranged in rows and columns); and
a processor (FIG. 2, element 20) processes the rasterizer plane to form the batch histogram and display a map of the batch histogram on a display (FIG. 2, element 210. FIG. 5, step 508: Display mapped images ad information pertaining to hit counts. Paragraph [0018]: The data in the raster plane may include vertical and horizontal histograms that show the relative total hit counts).
Letts however does not teach a graphics processing unit (GPU) capable of processing multiple threads, configured to execute code to cause the GPU to group multiple threads into groups of a first type of group; assign each thread group of the first type of group to one column in the raster plane; execute a common instruction per thread group of the first type to populate the raster plane with data from the digitized waveform; and transfer the batch histogram upon completion; and a central processing unit (CPU) in communication with the GPU, the CPU configured to execute code to cause the CPU to receive and display the batch histogram from the GPU.
Honda discloses a system comprising a GPU in communication with a CPU (FIG. 2, elements 140 and 110), wherein the GPU generates a histogram of an input data based on a calculated appearance frequency/population (paragraphs [0050]-[0051] and FIG. 3: The input data in the raster plane 200 and the appearance frequency), by associating input data with each of a plurality of thread groups, and processing the thread group to calculate the appearance frequency/population of a row/column of the input data (paragraphs [0052]-[0054]), wherein the system displays the generated histogram in a display unit (paragraph [0032]), wherein the system displays a converted image associated with the generated histogram (paragraphs [0031]-[0032]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Letts’ system to include a GPU for calculating the appearance frequency (hit counts) to generate the histogram of the input data as disclosed by Honda to suppress the number of times of execution of the processing in calculation of the appearance frequency (paragraph [0026]).
Regarding to claims 10, 19: wherein grouping multiple threads into groups of a first type of group comprises assigning a specific sample place on each of the digitized waveforms to each group of the first type of group (Honda: paragraph [0052]).
Regarding to claim 12: wherein each column of the raster plane resides in a contiguous region of the memory (Letts: paragraphs [0015]-[0016]).
Claim(s) 6 and 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Letts (US 2016/0293144) in view of Honda (US 2021/0383499), and further in view of Sudarsky (US 2020/0272229).
Letts, as modified, discloses the claimed invention as discussed above, except wherein the GPU is further configured to execute code to cause the GPU to group multiple groups of the first type
of group into groups of a second type of group, a number of groups of the second type of group
corresponding to a number of the columns in the raster plane.
Sudarsky discloses a system comprising a GPU for performing a parallel computation in one-, two-, or three-dimensional grids (paragraph [0044]), by grouping multiple threads into a group (FIG. 4: The threads (440, 445, 450) are grouped in the thread block 430), and grouping the groups into a second type of group (FIG. 4: The thread block (0,0), the thread block (1,0), … , the thread block (m,n)), a number of groups of the second type of group corresponding to a number of the columns in the raster plane of a memory (FIG. 4, element 420).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Letts’ system, as modified, to include grouping the thread groups into the second type of groups to allow the GPU to parallelly perform the computation in multiple dimensional as taught by Sudarsky (paragraph [0044]).
CONTACT INFORMATION
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to LAM S NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571)272-2151.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, DOUGLAS RODRIGUEZ, can be reached on 571-431-0716. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/LAM S NGUYEN/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2853