DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claims 1, 8, and 15 have been amended.
Claims 1-20 have been examined.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 September 23, 2025 has been entered.
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.
Claims 1, 8, and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by US Publication No. 2020/0401408 by Burky et al. (hereinafter referred to as “Burky”).
Regarding claims 1, 8, and 15, taking claim 1 as representative, Burky discloses:
a computing device, comprising: resynchronization detection circuitry configured to detect, during an execution time of an instruction, a resynchronization (Burky discloses, Figure 1, a computing device which discloses a processor, memory, and instructions. Burky also discloses, at ¶ [0078], detecting, which discloses circuitry do to so, a misprediction, which discloses a resynchronization, after a commit point, i.e., during execution time of an instruction.);
pointer regeneration circuitry configured to regenerate, in response to the detection, an instruction pointer at least in part by walking a queue (Burky discloses, at ¶ [0081], a UID pointer that points to an instruction to which execution can be rewound in response to detecting a misprediction, which discloses pointer regeneration circuitry. As disclosed at ¶ [0078], the recovery involves walking the entries of the register commit queue (RCQ).); and
resynchronization circuitry configured to perform, during the execution time of the instruction, the resynchronization by using the regenerated instruction pointer (Burky discloses, at ¶ [0081], restoring execution to the point indicated by the UID pointer before reaching another commit point, i.e., during the execution time of the instruction.).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-7, 9-14, and 16-20 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.
Response to Arguments
On pages 8-9 of the response filed September 23, 2025 (“response”), the Applicant argues, “Burky does not disclose at least the limitation of "circuitry configured to regenerate, in response to the detection, an instruction pointer at least in part by walking a queue" of pending claim 1. Burky does not regenerate an instruction pointer in response to the detection by walking a queue. Instead, in response to the detection, Burky restores execution to a point already pointed to by an already present instruction pointer. As stated by the Office Action at pg. 2-3, "Burky discloses, at [0081], restoring execution to the point indicated by the UID pointer before reaching another commit point." Burky at [0081] states that "Each checkpoint 82 may be associated with a set of checkpoint state information 84 indicating properties of that checkpoint. For example the checkpoint state information 84 may include a valid field 86 which indicates whether the corresponding checkpoint is valid; a UID or ROB pointer field 88 which represents either the UID of the uop at the point of execution for which the checkpoint was captured, or a pointer to the entry of the reorder buffer 50 corresponding to that uop; a RCQ pointer 90 which points to the location in the RCQ 76 corresponding to the point at which the checkpoint was taken ..." Thus, Burky does not disclose at least the limitation of "circuitry configured to regenerate, in response to the detection, an instruction pointer at least in part by walking a queue" of pending claim 1.”
Though fully considered, the Examiner respectfully disagrees. Burky discloses that recovery involves walking the register commit queue. This discloses the newly added limitation. Accordingly, the Applicant’s arguments are deemed unpersuasive.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SHAWN DOMAN whose telephone number is (571)270-5677. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday through Friday 8:30am-6pm Eastern Time.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Jyoti Mehta can be reached on 571-270-3995. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/SHAWN DOMAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2183