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 04/17/2026.
Claims 1-19 and 21 have been examined.
Response to Amendment
In the instant amendment, claims 1, 3, 9, 11, 17 and 19 have been amended.
The 35 USC §101 rejection over claims 1-2, 4-10, and 14-18 is withdrawn in view of Applicant’s amendments.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 21 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.
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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied 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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1-4, 6, 8-12, 14, and 16-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 2020/0257566 to Ganguli et al. (hereafter “Ganguli”) in further view of US 2007/0147237 to Haddad et al. (hereafter “Haddad”), US 2017/0171752 to Lee et al. (hereafter “Lee”), US 2006/0233168 to Lewites et al. (hereafter “Lewites”), and US 2004/0193889 to Satake et al. (hereafter “Satake”)
As per claim 1, Ganguli discloses a method comprising:
receiving, by a management controller of a composable computing system (FIG. 1; paragraph 0031 and 0034: “For example, if managed nodes are composed (e.g., resources collectively combined to provide certain functionality) based on requirements of the workloads that will be running on them, resources within a node are more likely to be fully utilized.”), a request to execute a system configuration operation to support a processing function (paragraphs 0061, 0071, 0080, 0086-0087, and 0111-0115: “The microtask resource controller 1726, which may be embodied as hardware, firmware, software, virtualized hardware, emulated architecture, and/or a combination thereof as discussed above, is configured to control the composition of disaggregated microservice resources (i.e., microtask resources) to perform the requested services. To do so, the illustrative microtask resource controller 1726 includes a database service 1728 configured to manage one or more databases, a timestamp service 1730 configured to apply timestamps, and a compose service 1732 configured to compose services via the microtask resources. The resource allocator 1734 is configured to allocate resources for each microtask, as may be requested by the other microtasks (e.g., the database service 1728, the timestamp service 1730, the compose service 1732, etc.) via a corresponding thread. It should be appreciated that the resource allocator 1734 is at the lowest level in the hierarchy of microtasks.” [Wingdings font/0xE0] processing the workloads);
determining, by the management controller, a first subset of different devices in the composable computing system that are accessible (FIGs. 8, 10, 12, and 14-15; paragraphs 0032, 0082-0083, 0118, 0124 and 0126: nodes 820, 1020, 1220 and 1440) based on the different devices receiving one or more of commands and requests from the management controller (paragraphs 0082-0083 and 0088: “The managed node 1570 may be embodied as an assembly of physical resources 620, such as processors 820, memory resources 720, accelerator circuits 1020, or data storage 1250, from the same or different sleds 400. Further, the managed node may be established, defined, or “spun up” by the orchestrator server 1520 at the time a workload is to be assigned to the managed node or at any other time, and may exist regardless of whether any workloads are presently assigned to the managed node.” [Wingdings font/0xE0] assigning/distributing/scheduling (deploying as claimed) the workload to the managed nodes) and the management controller adding operations to a queue at the different devices, the first subset of different devices being connected by pre-existing connections between the different devices (FIGs. 8, 10, 12, and 14-15; interconnection 842, 1042, 1242 and 1442 including multiple pod switches, Omni-path, InfiniBand or ethernet as disclosed by paragraph 0032);
determining, by the management controller, a second subset of the first subset of different devices in the composable computing system that are capable of executing the processing function (FIGs. 8, 10, 12, and 14-15; paragraphs 0082-0083, 0118, 0124 and 0126: nodes 820, 1020, 1220 and 1440), the second subset of the first subset having combined execution capabilities to execute the processing function (FIGs. 8, 10, 12, and 14-15; paragraphs 0082-0083, 0118, 0124 and 0126: “One or more of the sleds 1530, 1540, 1550, 1560 may be grouped into a managed node 1570, such as by the orchestrator server 1520, to collectively perform a workload (e.g., an application 1532 executed in a virtual machine or in a container). The managed node 1570 may be embodied as an assembly of physical resources 620, such as processors 820, memory resources 720, accelerator circuits 1020, or data storage 1250, from the same or different sleds 400. Further, the managed node may be established, defined, or “spun up” by the orchestrator server 1520 at the time a workload is to be assigned to the managed node or at any other time, and may exist regardless of whether any workloads are presently assigned to the managed node.” [Wingdings font/0xE0] processing the workload);
dynamically combining, by the management controller, the different devices comprising the second subset of the first subset as a single abstracted device (FIGs. 8, 10, 12, and 14-15; paragraphs 0082-0083, 0118, 0124 and 0126: “One or more of the sleds 1530, 1540, 1550, 1560 may be grouped into a managed node 1570, such as by the orchestrator server 1520, to collectively perform a workload (e.g., an application 1532 executed in a virtual machine or in a container). The managed node 1570 may be embodied as an assembly of physical resources 620, such as processors 820, memory resources 720, accelerator circuits 1020, or data storage 1250, from the same or different sleds 400.” [Wingdings font/0xE0] managed node 1570 (a single abstract device as claimed)), the single abstracted device communicating with the second subset of the first subset of different devices via the pre-existing connections (FIGs. 8, 10, 12, and 14-15; interconnection 842, 1042, 1242 and 1442 including multiple pod switches, Omni-path, InfiniBand or ethernet as disclosed by paragraph 0032) to perform coordinated processing functions (FIGs. 8, 10, 12, and 14-15; paragraphs 0082-0083, 0118, 0124 and 0126: “One or more of the sleds 1530, 1540, 1550, 1560 may be grouped into a managed node 1570, such as by the orchestrator server 1520, to collectively perform a workload (e.g., an application 1532 executed in a virtual machine or in a container).);
Ganguli discloses a connection between devices (FIGs. 8, 10, 12 and 14), however, Ganguli does not explicitly disclose the management controller adding operations to a queue at the different devices; the connections between devices are pre-existed; generating, by the management controller, an identifier corresponding with a single Service Set Identifier (SSID) for the single abstracted device, the identifier collectively instructs the different devices as the single abstracted device; and deploying the processing function to the single abstracted device by transmitting the processing function to the single SSID.
Haddad further discloses the management controller adding operations to a queue at the different devices (FIGs. 4-5; paragraphs 0003-0005, 0027-0029: “Each router 406 (7 edge routers 406and 3 intermediate routers 406b) includes a queuing system 408 with a queue 410 (which has individual class-based queues 410a, 410band 410c) and a scheduler 412 (which implements the queuing method 500).” [Wingdings font/0xE0] every router has a queue [Wingdings font/0xE0] clients/packet which is processes waiting to be executed (operation as claimed) is scheduled to be add to queues of other routers by a router)
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to combine a teaching of Haddad into Ganguli’s teaching and Lee’s teaching because it would provide for the purpose of the queuing method eliminates the reordering of a plurality of packets that includes an altered packet by marking the altered packet with an indicator that indicates an old QoS class and a new QoS class of the altered packet (e.g., this marking is done by a first/edge node) (Haddad, paragraph 0014).
Lee further discloses the connections between devices are pre-existed (paragraph 0015).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to combine a teaching of Lee into Ganguli’s teaching and Haddad’s teaching because it would provide for the purpose of reusing the preexisted connection to create a secure connection (Lee, paragraph 0015).
Lewites further discloses generating, by the management controller, an identifier corresponding with a single Service Set Identifier (SSID) for the single abstracted device (paragraphs 0009 and 0014-0015: “establishing an address of a frame as being associated with a virtual device by generating an address that identifies within the address that the address is associated with a virtual device.“), the identifier collectively instructs the different devices as the single abstracted device (paragraphs 0009 and 0014-0016: “In an embodiment, a portion of an address of a frame is assigned a value such that the value is distinguished from those assigned to physical devices. In such a case, the value indicates that the address is for a virtual device such that no physical device is associated with the assigned value. To further identify a virtual device, creation or generation of the address may include assigning an index to another byte of the address, where the index belongs to a table that maintains pointers to virtual device objects.” [Wingdings font/0xE0] the generated address indicating/identifying the VNIC containing VNIC specific functions)
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to combine a teaching of Lewites into Ganguli’s teaching, Haddad’s teaching, and Lee’s teaching because it would provide for the purpose of routing the frame based on checking information in an address to determine whether to route the frame to a specific local virtual device or a remote virtual device. In an embodiment, such a virtual device may be a virtual network interface card (Lewites, paragraph 0009).
Satake further discloses deploying the processing function to the single abstracted device by transmitting the processing function to the single SSID (paragraph 0090)
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to combine a teaching of Lewites into Ganguli’s teaching, Haddad’s teaching, and Lee’s teaching because it would provide for the purpose of transmitting unit for transmitting, to the job processor, the instruction data or the data to be processed signed by the signing unit (Satake, paragraph 0015).
As per claim 2, Ganguli discloses wherein the different devices in the composable computing system comprise different types of Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) devices (FIGs. 8 and 10; paragraphs 0061 and 0067: “For example, the accelerator circuits 1020 may be embodied as, for example, field programmable gate arrays (FPGA), application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), security co-processors, graphics processing units (GPUs), neuromorphic processor units, quantum computers, machine learning circuits, or other specialized processors, controllers, devices, and/or circuits.”)
As per claim 3, Ganguli does not explicitly disclose wherein the management controller adds operations to the queue at the different devices, either directly at the different devices or through a dispatcher/scheduler component of the composable computing system.
Haddad further discloses wherein the management controller adds operations to the queue at the different devices, either directly at the different devices or through a dispatcher/scheduler component of the composable computing system devices (FIGs. 4-5; paragraphs 0003-0005, 0027-0029: “Each router 406 (7 edge routers 406and 3 intermediate routers 406b) includes a queuing system 408 with a queue 410 (which has individual class-based queues 410a, 410band 410c) and a scheduler 412 (which implements the queuing method 500).” [Wingdings font/0xE0] every router has a queue [Wingdings font/0xE0] clients/packet which is processes waiting to be executed (operation as claimed) is scheduled to be add to queues of other routers by a router)
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to combine a teaching of Haddad into Ganguli’s teaching and Lee’s teaching because it would provide for the purpose of the queuing method eliminates the reordering of a plurality of packets that includes an altered packet by marking the altered packet with an indicator that indicates an old QoS class and a new QoS class of the altered packet (e.g., this marking is done by a first/edge node) (Haddad, paragraph 0014).
As per claim 4, Ganguli discloses wherein the single abstracted device communicates with the second subset of the first subset of different devices via the pre-existing connections without manual intervention (FIGs. 8, 10, 12, and 14-15; interconnection 842, 1042, 1242 and 1442 including multiple pod switches, Omni-path, InfiniBand or ethernet as disclosed by paragraph 0032).
Ganguli discloses a connection between devices (FIGs. 8, 10, 12 and 14), however, Ganguli does not explicitly disclose communicates with the second subset of the first subset of different devices via the pre-existing connections without manual intervention.
Lee further discloses communicates with the second subset of the first subset of different devices via the pre-existing connections without manual intervention (paragraphs 0090, 0093 and 0098: “in establishing the secure connection with the service network node the processing circuit may be configured to determine whether the radio access network node has a pre-existing secure connection with the service network node. If the pre-existing secure connection is available, the processing circuit is configured to reuse the pre-existing secure connection with the service network node is reused.”)
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to combine a teaching of Lee into Ganguli’s teaching and Haddad’s teaching because it would provide for the purpose of reusing the preexisted connection to create a secure connection (Lee, paragraph 0015).
As per claim 6, Ganguli discloses wherein the management controller is in communication with a plurality of interconnect fabrics that enable communications between different devices in the composable computing system (FIGs. 12, 14-15 and 17; paragraphs 0072).
As per claim 8, Ganguli discloses wherein deploying the processing function enables the processing function to operationalize the processing function to the single abstracted device (paragraphs 0082-0083 and 0088: “The managed node 1570 may be embodied as an assembly of physical resources 620, such as processors 820, memory resources 720, accelerator circuits 1020, or data storage 1250, from the same or different sleds 400. Further, the managed node may be established, defined, or “spun up” by the orchestrator server 1520 at the time a workload is to be assigned to the managed node or at any other time, and may exist regardless of whether any workloads are presently assigned to the managed node.” [Wingdings font/0xE0] assigning/distributing/scheduling (deploying as claimed) the workload to the managed nodes).
As per claim 9, it is a medium claim, which recite(s) the same limitations as those of claim 1. Accordingly, claim 9 is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection of claim 1.
As per claim 10, it is a medium claim, which recite(s) the same limitations as those of claim 2. Accordingly, claim 10 is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection of claim 2.
As per claim 11, it is a medium claim, which recite(s) the same limitations as those of claim 3. Accordingly, claim 11 is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection of claim 3.
As per claim 12, it is a medium claim, which recite(s) the same limitations as those of claim 4. Accordingly, claim 13 is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection of claim 4.
As per claim 14, it is a medium claim, which recite(s) the same limitations as those of claim 6. Accordingly, claim14 is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection of claim 6.
As per claim 16, it is a medium claim, which recite(s) the same limitations as those of claim 8. Accordingly, claim16 is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection of claim 8.
As per claim 17, it is a system claim, which recite(s) the same limitations as those of claim 1. Accordingly, claim 17 is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection of claim 1.
As per claim 18, it is a system claim, which recite(s) the same limitations as those of claim 2. Accordingly, claim 18 is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection of claim 2.
As per claim 19, it is a system claim, which recite(s) the same limitations as those of claim 3. Accordingly, claim 19 is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection of claim 3.
Claims 5 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ganguli in view of Haddad, Lee, Lewites, and Satake, as applied to claims 1 and 9, and in further view of US 2023/0222082 to Dastidar et al. (hereafter “Dastidar”)
As per claim 5, Ganguli does not explicitly disclose wherein a first device in the first subset of different devices in the composable computing system includes a second controller that coordinates internal communication between a plurality of chipsets within the first device, and external communication with the management controller.
Dastidar further discloses wherein a first device in the first subset of different devices in the composable computing system includes a second controller that coordinates internal communication between a plurality of chipsets within the first device (FIG. 1; paragraphs 0017 and 0020: NOC 170), and external communication with the management controller (FIG. 1; paragraphs 0017 and 0020: NOC 170 connecting to I/O Gateway including (PCIE controller) to host/server 105).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to combine a teaching of Dastidar into Ganguli’s teaching, Haddad’s teaching, Lee’s teaching, Lewites’ teaching and Satake’s teaching because it would provide for the purpose of a smart network interface controller (SmartNIC) that includes an I/O gateway configured to couple to an external host and a processor subsystem connected to the I/O gateway that includes processing cores and an interconnect communicatively coupling the processing cores (Dastidar, paragraph 0005).
As per claim 13, it is a medium claim, which recite(s) the same limitations as those of claim 5. Accordingly, claim 13 is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection of claim 5.
Claims 7 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ganguli in view of Lee, as applied to claims 1 and 9, and in further view of US 2012/0047506 to Maes
As per claim 7, Ganguli discloses wherein deploying the processing function to the single abstracted device (paragraphs 0082-0083 and 0088: “The managed node 1570 may be embodied as an assembly of physical resources 620, such as processors 820, memory resources 720, accelerator circuits 1020, or data storage 1250, from the same or different sleds 400. Further, the managed node may be established, defined, or “spun up” by the orchestrator server 1520 at the time a workload is to be assigned to the managed node or at any other time, and may exist regardless of whether any workloads are presently assigned to the managed node.” [Wingdings font/0xE0] assigning/distributing/scheduling (deploying as claimed) the workload to the managed nodes).
Ganguli does not explicitly disclose providing, by the management controller, output from the single abstracted device corresponding with the processing function.
Maes further discloses providing, by the management controller, output from the single abstracted device corresponding with the processing function (FIG. 8; paragraph 0066).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to combine a teaching of Maes into Ganguli’s teaching and Lee’s teaching because it would provide for the purpose of A usage monitor enabler SE can be a particular SE that allows monitoring of the usage of resources or enablers by querying or subscribing to usage information for the enabler (Maes, paragraph 0066).
As per claim 15, it is a medium claim, which recite(s) the same limitations as those of claim 7. Accordingly, claim15 is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection of claim 7.
Response to Arguments
Applicants’ arguments have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection. Applicants’ amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. The aforementioned newly added limitations taught by the new references (please refer to section above for further details).
Conclusion
Applicants’ 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 extension fee 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 date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication should be directed to examiner Tuan Dao, whose telephone/fax numbers are (571) 270 3387 and (571) 270 4387, respectively. The examiner can normally be reached on every Monday-Thursday and the second Friday of the bi-week from 7:30AM to 5:00PM.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner's supervisor, Pierre Vital, can be reached at telephone number (571) 272 4215.
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/TUAN C DAO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2198
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