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
The instant application having Application No. 18/281,274 filed on 10/18/2023 is presented for examination.
Examiner Notes
Examiner cites particular columns and line numbers in the references as applied to the claims below for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings in the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested that, in preparing responses, the applicant fully consider the references in entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the examiner.
Drawings
The applicant’s drawings submitted are acceptable for examination purposes.
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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.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
The first two limitations of "receiving" merely recite data gathering, and the last three limitations "assigning," "calculating," and "determining" recite mental processes, wherein the "by the at least one processor" is nothing more than generic computer component for applying the abstract idea. As such, claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101.
Claims 2-9 depend from claim 1 and do not add additional elements that would overcome the rejection of claim 1 and are thus rejected for at least the same reason.
Claim 10 is a apparatus claim with similar limitations as claim 1. Claim 10 has the same analysis as claim 1 and is rejected for at least the same reason.
Claims 11-18 depend from claim 10 and do not add additional elements that would overcome the rejection of claim 10 and are thus rejected for at least the same reason.
Claim 19 is a medium claim with similar limitations as claim 1. Claim 19 has the same analysis as claim 1 and is rejected for at least the same reason.
Claim 20 depends from claim 19 and does not add additional elements that would overcome the rejection of claim 19 and is thus rejected for at least the same reason.
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 1-7, 9-16 and 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Karamanolis (US 2006/0280119) in view of Watts (US 2011/0188507)
As per claim 1, Karamanolis discloses a method for allocating resources, the method being implemented by at least one processor, the method comprising:
receiving, by the at least one processor, first information that relates to a number of agents (Paragraph 4 “resource consumer”) included in a plurality of agents (Paragraph 69 “We know that for any period of time [t.sub.1,t.sub.2), SFQ ensures fairness bounded by U f g = ( c f max .function. ( i ) .PHI. f .function. ( i ) + c g max .function. ( i ) .PHI. g .function. ( i ) ) . ##EQU7## Thus, this bound holds for every single interval of an execution with C-SFQ. In fact, the fairness bound in every single interval is a function of the maximum cost of the tasks actually executed during that interval (not of the maximum cost of any task of a flow). This results in a tighter fairness bound for each interval i, defined as: U f g * .times. i = ( c f max .PHI. f + c g max .PHI. g ) ( 13 ) ##EQU8## Thus, the fairness bound across a sequence of intervals is the worst bound among all individual intervals in the sequence, given by equation (12).”);
receiving, by the at least one processor, second information that relates to whether, for each respective agent included in the plurality of agents, the respective agent is requesting an allocation of an indivisible resource during a particular allocation round (Paragraph 70 “Since support for high degree of concurrency is important in many computing services, we further discuss here a depth-controlled WFQ variant. In particular, an exemplary embodiment of an algorithm referred to herein as Controllable SFQ(D) (or "C-SFQ(D)" for short) is provided, which is an extension of depth-controlled Start-tag Fair Queuing SFQ(D). As described further below, the maximum depth D is a scheduler parameter that may be desirable to be adjusted, along with flow weights, according to system and workload dynamics. It is thus desirable for a controllable scheduler to be fair even when D changes. The original fairness bound for SFQ(D) for when weights and D do not change is: U f g = ( D + 1 ) .times. ( c f max .PHI. f + c g max .PHI. g ) ( 14 ) ##EQU9##”);
assigning, by the at least one processor to each respective agent included in the plurality of agents, a respective weight that relates to an importance of the respective agent (Paragraph 18 “As described above with FIG. 1, such change may be received from a controller 10. In operational block 202, the scheduler utilizes a weighted proportional-share scheduling algorithm (e.g., WFQ) to maintain fairness in allocating shares of a resource to competing consumers in accordance with the changed weight. As described further herein, unlike traditional weighted proportional-share schedulers, embodiments of the present invention provide a weighted proportional-share scheduler that is capable of maintaining fairness even when weights change dynamically. According to one embodiment, a weighted proportional-share scheduling algorithm is provided that adapts its internal state (e.g., "tags," as discussed further below) to maintain, within a defined tolerance that is bounded by a constant over any time interval, allocation of shares of the resource to the competing consumers proportionally to respective weights assigned to the competing consumers. Thus, as the weights assigned to the competing consumers change, the weighted proportional-share scheduling algorithm adapts its internal state to those changes in a manner such that the scheduler continues to fairly allocate shares of the resource to the competing consumers in proportion to their newly specified weights.”);
calculating, by the at least one processor for each respective agent based on the assigned respective weight, a respective agent-specific allocation probability (Paragraph 36 “Many variants of WFQ scheduling algorithms have been developed and extensively studied in the literature. They are all designed following the same principles. Each flow f comprises a sequence of tasks p.sub.f.sup.o . . . p.sub.f.sup.n arriving at the server. Each task p.sub.f.sup.i has an associated cost c.sub.f.sup.i bounded by a constant c.sub.f.sup.max. For example, the tasks may be packets of varying lengths or tasks of varying costs. Fair queuing allocates the throughput of the resource in proportion to weights assigned to the competing flows. The weights may represent service rates, such as bits or cycles or tasks per second, as examples. Only the relative values of the weights are significant, but it is convenient to assume that the weight .phi..sub.f for each flow f represents a percentage share of resource throughput, and that task costs are normalized to a resource throughput of one unit of cost per unit of time.”)
Karamanolis does not expressly disclose but Watts discloses determining, by the at least one processor, an allocation of the indivisible resource for the particular allocation round based on each respective agent-specific allocation probability (Paragraph 15 “A method for allocating a resource among a plurality of consumers of the resource is described herein. For each consumer of the plurality of consumers, a configurable weight associated with the consumer is determined. For each consumer of the plurality of consumers, credits assigned to the consumer at a first interval of a plurality of variable intervals are determined. The credits may be assigned in proportion to the configurable weight associated with the consumer. A consumer is selected for servicing based on the credits of the consumer.”).
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the method of Karamanolis to include the teachings of Watts because it provides for the purpose of more efficiently scheduling by incorporating the teaching to include a time period on the unit of work performed. In this way, the combination benefits from the increased efficiency of the combination.
As per claim 2, Karamanolis does not expressly disclose but Watts discloses further comprising receiving third information that relates to a length of a time period (Paragraph 41 “The transmission of larger packets consumes more bandwidth than packets of smaller size. To account for the difference in packet size, each time a consumer is given service, its credits are decremented by the cost of service. In another embodiment, the cost of consuming the resource may be a fixed amount. The interval counter may be decremented by the fixed amount each time a unit of work is performed.”) and fourth information that relates to a number of allocation rounds within the time period during which the indivisible resource is to be allocated,
wherein the determining of the allocation of the indivisible resource for the particular allocation round is further based on the third information and the fourth information (Paragraph 42 “The interval counter associated with the port through which the selected consumer was serviced is decremented by the cost of the service, at step 229. Each time a consumer is given service, the interval counter is decremented by the same number of credits as the credit counter of the selected consumer. Processing loops back to step 210 where the value of the interval counter is checked. It should be appreciated that in alternate embodiments, steps 227 and 229 may be performed in any order, in serial or in parallel.”).
As per claim 3, Karamanolis does not expressly disclose but Watts discloses further comprising receiving fifth information that relates to a number of units of the indivisible resource available to be allocated during an entirety of the time period (Paragraph 35 “The credits of each consumer are maintained by a credit counter. An interval counter tracks the total number of credits allocated to the consumers on an interval-by-interval basis and the usage of those credits. The interval counter may be initialized to zero and the credit counters may be initialized to a constant value. In other embodiments, the interval counter and credit counters may be initialized to other values.”);
wherein the determining of the allocation of the indivisible resource for the particular allocation round is further based on the fifth information (Paragraph 35).
As per claim 4, Karamanolis further discloses further comprising receiving sixth information that relates to an availability budget for the allocation of the indivisible resource during the particular allocation round (Paragraph 22 “Utility schedulers may be employed in such utility service environments for adjusting the performance of a workload by controlling the resources available to execute such workload.”);
wherein the determining of the allocation of the indivisible resource for the particular allocation round is further based on the availability budget (Paragraph 22).
As per claim 5, Karamanolis further discloses further comprising receiving seventh information that relates to prior allocations of the indivisible resource over a predetermined period of time (Paragraph 4 “Existing WFQ schedulers are "fair" in the sense that active flows share the available resource capacity proportionally to their weights, within some tolerance that is bounded by a constant over any time interval. However, traditional WFQ scheduling algorithms assume that flow weights are fixed (or "static") over time. Such traditional WFQ scheduling algorithms cannot ensure fairness when weights are adjusted dynamically.”);
wherein the determining of the allocation of the indivisible resource for the particular allocation round is further based on the seventh information (Paragraph 4).
As per claim 6, Karamanolis further discloses further comprising receiving eighth information that, for each respective agent that has received the allocation of the indivisible resource for the particular allocation round, indicates at least one from among the indivisible resource having been utilized by the respective agent and the indivisible resource having been wasted by the respective agent (Paragraph 41).
As per claim 7, Karamanolis further discloses comprising measuring, based at least in part on the eighth information, a first metric that relates to at least one from among a round allocation rate, a round attendance rate, a round efficiency, an agent satisfaction rate, a weighted average for the agent satisfaction rate, an agent attendance rate, and a maximum difference of agent allocation rates (Paragraph 8).
As per claim 9, Karamanolis further discloses wherein the assigning of each respective weight to each respective agent is based on an input that is received from a user (Paragraph 17 “Controller 10 may be implemented to autonomously adjust the scheduler parameters 101 (e.g., weights .phi.) based on the received performance 102, or in certain embodiments controller 10 may be implemented to output performance 102 to a user and/or receive input from a user to dynamically adjust the scheduler parameters 101. Thus, the scheduler parameters may be dynamically adjusted autonomously by controller 10 or manually via user input.”).
As per claims 10-16 and 18, they are apparatus claims having similar limitations as cited in claims 1-7 and 9 and are rejected under the same rationale.
As per claims 19 and 20, they are medium claims having similar limitations as cited in claims 1-7 and 9 and are rejected under the same rationale.
Claims 8 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Karamanolis in view of Watts in further view of Medard (US 20200328858)
As per claim 8, Karamanolis does not expressly disclose but Medard discloses further comprising:
obtaining a first estimate that relates to an expected future demand for the indivisible resource (Abstract); and
obtaining a second estimate that relates to a utilization reliability with respect to the indivisible resource (Paragraph 4),
wherein the calculating of each respective agent-specific allocation probability comprises maximizing Jensen's inequality with respect to the assigned respective weight for each respective agent, the first estimate, and the second estimate (Paragraph 22).
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the method of Karamanolis to include the teachings of Medard because it provides for the purpose of increasing the efficiency of the scheduling algorithm.
As per claim 17, it is a apparatus claim having similar limitations as cited in claim 8 and is thus rejected under the same rationale.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Saffre (US 2012/0331476) discloses scheduling demands on a system having a plurality of resources are provided. The method includes the steps of, on receipt of a new demand for resources: determining the total resources required to complete said demand and a deadline for the completion of that demand; determining a plurality of alternative resource allocations which will allow completion of the demand before the deadline; for each of said alternative resource allocations, determining whether, based on allocations of resources to existing demands, said alternative resource allocation will result in a utilization of resources which is closer to an optimum utilization of said resources; and selecting, based on said determination, one of said alternative resource allocations to complete said demand so as to optimise utilisation of resources of the system.
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 1/20/2026