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 .
The amendments were received on 9/30/2025. Claims 1, 2, 4-11, 17, 18, and 20-25 are pending where claims 1, 2, 4-11, 17, 18, and 20-25 were previously presented and claims 3, 12-16, and 19 were cancelled.
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 11/3/2025 has been entered.
35 USC § 101
The applicant amended the independent claims to incorporate additional clarifying details that direct the claims towards a practical application related to performing a compaction operation and what that entails. The amendments change the analysis of the respective “performing a compaction operation” limitation from the previous Office Action in a manner that, when viewed as a combination, would appear to integrate the claims into a practical application.
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.
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, 2, 7, 11, 17, 18, and 23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Choi et al [US 2023/0033773 A1] in view of Dayan et al [US 2023/0229651 A1] and Bolkhovitin et al [US 2019/0179559 A1].
With regard to claim 1, Choi teaches a compaction method for Sorted String Table (SST) files stored in zones of a Zoned Namespace (ZNS) Solid State Drive (SSD) (see paragraphs [0051], [0047], and [0048]; ZNS SSD is utilized for storage and compaction of SST files), the compaction comprising:
determining
and performing a compaction operation on an SST file
Choi does not appear to teach priority information for SST files and merging data from one level to another level (see paragraph [0042]; this ‘deletes’ the data in the top zone since it is now moved to a lower zone via compaction/merging thus allowing new writes to occur in that upper level), in particular, Choi does not appear to explicitly teach:
determining compaction priorities of a first plurality of SST files in a first level of a Log Structure Merge Tree (LSM-Tree) based on attribute information of a first plurality of zones corresponding to the first plurality of SST files and a second plurality of SST files in a second level of the LSM-Tree,
and performing a compaction operation on an SST file having a highest compaction priority among the first plurality of SST files by deleting the SST file in the respective zone and reclaiming the respective zone for storing a new SST file,
wherein the attribute information of the first plurality of zones comprises at least one of a size of valid files in each of the first plurality of zones, a size of invalid files in the each of the first plurality of zones, a number of invalid files in the each of the first plurality of zones, and expected expiration times of valid files in the each of the first plurality of zones, and
wherein the determining the compaction priorities of the first plurality of SST files comprises:
performing weighting and summing one or more of a ratio based on size of valid files in each of the first plurality of zones, a ratio based on the size of invalid files in the each of the first plurality of zones, a ratio based on the number of the invalid files in the each of the first plurality of zones, and an average value of expected expiration times of the valid files in the each of the first plurality of zones.
Dayan teaches determining compaction priorities of a first plurality of SST files in a first level of a Log Structure Merge Tree (LSM-Tree)
and performing compaction on a first SST file having a highest compaction priority among the plurality of first SST files based the priority information by deleting the SST file
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to modify the SST file compaction process of Choi by utilizing means to selectively choose particular STT files to compact based on overlap criteria as taught by Dayan in order to merge files that are most similar (i.e. least amount of overlap) in order to be able to identify files that are close to a perfect overlap to limit the range of the new files so that the new file’s key ranges don’t drastically increase while also helping to minimize write amplification (see paragraph [0065] for discussion of write-amplification).
Choi in view of Dayan teach determining compaction priorities of a first plurality of SST files in a first level of a Log Structure Merge Tree (LSM-Tree) based on attribute information of a first plurality of zones corresponding to the first plurality of SST files and a second plurality of SST files in a second level of the LSM-Tree; … and performing a compaction operation on an SST file having a highest compaction priority among the first plurality of SST files (see Choi, Figure 5 and paragraphs [0086]-[0088] and Dayan, paragraphs [0082]-[0083] and [0005]; the system can determine capacity/size information/attributes to determine which level and respective file(s) that would require compaction);
and performing compaction on a first SST file having a highest compaction priority among the plurality of first SST files based the priority information by deleting the SST file in the respective zone and reclaiming the respective zone for storing a new SST file (see Dayan, paragraphs [0082], [0083], [0086], and [0066]; see Choi, paragraph [0042]; the system can use a technique to choose which SST to use (i.e. prioritize) based on key overlapping ratio information and then perform the compaction).
Choi in view of Dayan do not appear to explicitly teach wherein the attribute information of the first plurality of zones comprises at least one of a size of valid files in each of the first plurality of zones, a size of invalid files in the each of the first plurality of zones, a number of invalid files in the each of the first plurality of zones, and expected expiration times of valid files in the each of the first plurality of zones, and
wherein the determining the compaction priorities of the first plurality of SST files comprises:
performing weighting and summing one or more of a ratio based on size of valid files in each of the first plurality of zones, a ratio based on the size of invalid files in the each of the first plurality of zones, a ratio based on the number of the invalid files in the each of the first plurality of zones, and an average value of expected expiration times of the valid files in the each of the first plurality of zones.
Bolkhovitin teaches wherein the attribute information of the first plurality of zones comprises at least one of a size of valid files in each of the first plurality of zones, a size of invalid files in the each of the first plurality of zones, a number of invalid files in the each of the first plurality of zones, and expected expiration times of valid files in the each of the first plurality of zones (see paragraph [0078]; attributes can be associated with the quantity or size of the valid or invalid data).
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to modify the SST file compaction process of Choi in view of Dayan by considering access frequency (reads/writes) and/or amount or size of valid/invalid data associated with the zones/groups as taught by Bolkhovitin in order to be able to help maintain the longevity of the storage device via lifetime management considerations of the respective underlying zones/blocks thereby extending how long a device can be used without being replaced in the system.
Choi in view of Dayan and Bolkhovitin teach wherein the determining the compaction priorities of the first plurality of SST files comprises: performing weighting and summing one or more of a ratio based on size of valid files in each of the first plurality of zones, a ratio based on the size of invalid files in the each of the first plurality of zones, a ratio based on the number of the invalid files in the each of the first plurality of zones, and an average value of expected expiration times of the valid files in the each of the first plurality of zones (see Bolkhovitin, paragraph [0074] and [0077]-[0078]; see Choi, Figure 2 and paragraphs [0086]-[0088]; the system can include as part of the determining, the ability to weight and sum values together including based on the number/quantity of invalid files as well as the percentage of invalid data across all of a storage drive or zone).
With regard to claim 2, Choi in view of Dayan and Bolkhovitin teach wherein the performing the compaction operation on the SST file having the highest compaction priority among the first plurality of SST files comprises: selecting the SST file with the highest compaction priority from among the first plurality of SST files; and performing the compaction operation on the selected SST file and a third plurality of SST files in the second level, wherein a key range of each of the third plurality of SST files overlaps at least part of a key range of the selected SST (see Dayan, paragraphs [0082]-[0083]; the system can determine a priority for which SST to compact and then perform the compaction).
With regard to claim 7, Choi in view of Dayan and Bolkhovitin teach wherein the LSM-Tree is based on a LevelDB or a RocksDB (see Dayan, paragraph [0082]; RocksDB or LevelDB can be used).
With regard to claims 11 and 17, these claims are substantially similar to claim 1 and are rejected for similar reasons as discussed above.
With regard to claims 18 and 23, these claims are substantially similar to claims 2 and 7 respectively and are rejected for similar reasons as discussed above.
Double Patenting
The applicant amended the claims to differentiate the claims from the reference application. Therefore, in view of the amendments and respective differences between the claims, the respective provisional Double Patenting rejections have been withdrawn.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-6, 8-10, 20-22, 24, and 25 are 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Claims 4-6, 8-10, 20-22, 24, and 25 recite limitations that do not appear to be taught or fairly suggested by the prior art of record, in particular, claims 4 and 20 limitations about the particular information that is used by the system for the compaction priorities determination. Claims 5, 6, 8-10, 21, 22, 24, and 25 depend upon claims 4 and 20 and would be allowable over the cited prior art based on their dependency to claims 4 and 20.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments (see the fifth paragraph on page 18 through the second paragraph on page 23) with respect to the 35 USC 101 rejections have been fully considered and are persuasive. The 35 USC 101 rejections of the claims have been withdrawn. The applicant amended the independent claims to incorporate additional clarifying details that direct the claims towards a practical application related to performing a compaction operation and what that entails. The amendments change the analysis of the respective “performing a compaction operation” limitation from the previous Office Action in a manner that, when viewed as a combination, would appear to integrate the claims into a practical application.
Applicant's arguments (see the second to last paragraph on page 23 through the last paragraph on page 25) have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. The applicant argues that the prior art references do not teach the claim limitations as amended. The Examiner respectfully disagrees. As illustrated in the 35 USC 103 rejections above, after further search and consideration, the combination illustrates that as part of the process of determining candidates (i.e. determining compaction priorities by filtering/reducing the set to some subset of candidates) can be based on the device/drive/zone with the system using information about the total amount (summing) and/or percentage (weighting) information about the valid/invalid data. Therefore, as can be seen, the combination teaches, or fairly suggests the amended limitations as recited.
Applicant’s arguments (see first two paragraphs on page 26) with respect to the Double Patenting rejections have been fully considered and are persuasive. The double patenting rejections of the claims have been withdrawn. The applicant amended the claims to differentiate the claims from the reference application. Therefore, in view of the amendments and respective differences between the claims, the respective provisional Double Patenting rejections have been withdrawn.
Conclusion
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/MARC S SOMERS/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2159 1/2/2026