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 detailed action is in response to Applicant's submission filed on 2 April 2026.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 16-17, 19-20,24 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.
REJECTIONS BASED ON PRIOR ART
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.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1,4-6, 11, 13-15, 18, 21, and 23-24 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated Sabol (US PG PUB No. 20230019966)
As per claim 1, a system (see Sabol FIG 1: 110 and [0023]), comprising:
a storage device (see Sabol FIG 1: 170 and [0026]); and
a processor configured to send a write request to the storage device (see Sabol FIG 1: 105 and [0025]), the write request including a data to be written and a reclaim unit identifier identifying how the data is to be organized on the storage device (see Sabol [0036]: “Application 118 may request a write operation to the memory 170 by, for example, issuing a memory write command to memory controller 171, and identify the logical sector to which the write operation should be performed. “),
wherein the processor is further configured to send a message to the storage device, the message indicating that the processor is to manage garbage collection of a reclaim unit identified by the reclaim unit identifier (see Sabol [0007]: “The host can initiate a garbage collection operation within the area of memory corresponding to the selected placement ID. Garbage collection operations for areas outside the selected placement ID can be performed by the memory controller.”),
wherein the processor is further configured to select a second reclaim unit identifier identifying a second reclaim unit, and to perform garbage collection of the reclaim unit identified by the reclaim unit identifier by sending a read request including the reclaim unit identifier, a second write request including the second reclaim unit identifier, or a delete request including the reclaim unit identifier to the storage device (see Sabol [0028]), and
wherein the storage device includes a block for which the storage device manages garbage collection by the storage device reading data from the block, writing data to a second block, and erasing the block (see Sabol [0027]).
As per claim 4, the system according to claim 1, wherein:
the reclaim unit includes a first size; and the storage device includes the second reclaim unit, the second reclaim unit including a second size, wherein the first size and the second size are different (see Sabol [0044]).
As per claim 5, the system according to claim 1,
wherein the storage device includes a controller to select the reclaim unit for garbage collection and to send a garbage collection message to the processor to inform the processor (see Sabol FIG 1: 171).
[The claim does not specify if the controller is configured to select and instead recites ‘to’ which may be taken as intended use.]
As per claim 6,the system according to claim 5,
wherein the controller is configured to select the reclaim unit for garbage collection based at least in part on a media integrity issue (see Sobol [0070]).
As per claim 11, a method, comprising:
receiving a write request at a storage device from a processor, the write request including a data to be written and a reclaim unit identifier identifying how the data is to be organized on the storage device (see Sabol [0036]: “Application 118 may request a write operation to the memory 170 by, for example, issuing a memory write command to memory controller 171, and identify the logical sector to which the write operation should be performed. “);
writing the data to a reclaim unit identified by the reclaim unit identifier (see [0036]: “ the memory controller 130 may write data to the flash memory devices in chunks of data that are pages, e.g., 16 KB. In other words, in some examples, the smallest chunk of data that can be written to the memory 170 may be a page.”);
receiving a message at the storage device from the processor, the message indicating that the processor is to manage garbage collection of the reclaim unit identified by the reclaim unit identifier (see Sabol [0007]: “The host can initiate a garbage collection operation within the area of memory corresponding to the selected placement ID. Garbage collection operations for areas outside the selected placement ID can be performed by the memory controller.”); and
[Sabol discloses setting up host garbage collection modes or placement directives, where the writing of the information to the drive is taken as receiving a message as recited in the claims (see Sabol [0076]: “ For example, the setup operation can include retrieval of a number of parameters from the drive, determining the HLBA range that will be used by application software after accounting for the garbage collection reserve, the maximum active RU per PU without drive GC, and reserve addresses used for HRU index information storage. This information will be written to the drive for retrieval during normal startup operations.”).]
receiving a read request including the reclaim unit identifier, a second write request including a second reclaim unit identifier, or a delete request including the reclaim unit identifier at the storage device from the processor (see Sabol [0028]),
[Sabol discloses computing system issuing requests to perform garbage collection operations within the area of memory corresponding to the selected placement ID.]
wherein the storage device includes a block for which the storage device manages garbage collection by the storage device reading data from the block, writing data to a second block, and erasing the block (see Sabol [0028]).
[Sabol discloses memory controller issuing requests to perform garbage collection operations outside the area of memory corresponding to the selected placement ID.]
As per claim 13, the method according to claim 11,
wherein the reclaim unit identifier includes a reclaim unit handle, the reclaim unit handle identifying the reclaim unit and the second reclaim unit (see Sabol [0007]).
As per claim 14, the method according to claim 11, wherein:
the reclaim unit identifier includes a logical address; and the method further comprises identifying the reclaim unit from an association between the logical address and the reclaim unit (see Sabol [0011]: “ At least one of a host device logical block address, a logical block address, or host device reclaim unit address related to the placement ID can be stored in the host device accessible database.”).
As per claim 15, the method according to claim 11, wherein:
the reclaim unit identifier includes a logical address range, the logical address range including a first logical address and a second logical address (see Sabol [0076]);
the reclaim unit includes the first logical address in the logical address range (see Sabol [0052]);
the second reclaim unit includes the second logical address in the logical address range (see Sabol [0052]); and
the method further comprises:
identifying the reclaim unit from an association between the logical address range and the reclaim unit (see Sabol [0056]); and
identifying the second reclaim unit from a second association between the logical address range and the second reclaim unit (see Sabol [0056]).
[Sabol discloses the reclaim unit stream comprising reclaim units that corresponding to logical divisions of the storage and further discloses mapping the logical divisions according to logical block addresses (see Sabol [0007]).]
As per claim 18, the method according to claim 11, further comprising:
selecting the reclaim unit for garbage collection by the storage device; and performing garbage collection on the reclaim unit by the storage device (see Sabol [0070]).
As per claim 21, a storage device, comprising:
a storage media to store a data (see Sabol FIG 1: 170), the storage media including a first reclaim unit identified by a first reclaim unit identifier and a second reclaim unit identified by a second reclaim unit identifier (see Sabol [0056]); and
a controller to manage access to the data in the storage media based on a request from a processor (see Sabol FIG 1: 171 and [0027]), the controller configured to manage perform garbage collection on the first reclaim unit (see Sabol [0027]),
wherein the storage device is configured to cede management of garbage collection on the second reclaim unit to the processor based at least in part on a garbage collection message received at the storage device from the processor, the processor configured to perform garbage collection on the second reclaim unit (see Sabol [0007]: “The host can initiate a garbage collection operation within the area of memory corresponding to the selected placement ID. Garbage collection operations for areas outside the selected placement ID can be performed by the memory controller.”),.
As per claim 23, the storage device according to claim 21, wherein:
the first reclaim unit includes a first size; and the second reclaim unit includes a second size, wherein the first size and the second size are different (see Sabol FIG 2B: and [0044]).
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 2,3, 12 and 22 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sabol (US PG PUB No. 20230019966) in view of Cariello (US PG PUB No. 20230395117).
As per claim 2, the system according to claim 1,
However, Sabol does not expressly disclose but in the same field of endeavor Cariello discloses
wherein the storage device is configured to assign a first garbage collection priority to the reclaim unit based at least in part on the message sent from the processor to the storage device (see Cariello FIG 3: 310 and [0063]).
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the invention to assign priorities to zones or regions as taught by Cariello.
The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been for the benefit of improved data retention and reliability (See Cariello [0012]).
Therefore it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the invention to further assign priority by ranking as taught by Cariello for the benefit of improved data retention and reliability to arrive at the invention as specified in the claims.
As per claim 3, the system according to claim 2, wherein:
the storage device includes a garbage collection priority unit to assign a second garbage collection priority to the second reclaim unit, the first garbage collection priority lower than the second garbage collection priority (see Cariello FIG 3: 310 and [0063]).
As per claim 12, the method according to claim 11,
However, Sabol does not expressly disclose but in the same field of endeavor Cariello discloses
wherein receiving the message at the storage device from the processor regarding management of garbage collection of the reclaim unit identified by the reclaim unit identifier includes assigning a priority to the reclaim unit (see Cariello FIG 3: 330 and [0066]).
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the invention to assign priorities to zones or regions as taught by Cariello.
The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been for the benefit of improved data retention and reliability (See Cariello [0012]).
Therefore it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the invention to further assign priority by ranking as taught by Cariello for the benefit of improved data retention and reliability to arrive at the invention as specified in the claims.
As per claim 22, the storage device according to claim 21,
However, Sabol does not expressly disclose but in the same field of endeavor Cariello discloses
further comprising a garbage collection priority unit to assign a first garbage collection priority to the first reclaim unit and to assign a second garbage collection priority to the second reclaim unit, the first garbage collection priority lower than the second garbage collection priority, the second garbage collection priority assigned to the second reclaim unit based at least in part on the garbage collection message received at the storage device from the processor (see Cariello FIG 3: 330 and [0066]).
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the invention to assign priorities to zones or regions as taught by Cariello.
The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been for the benefit of improved data retention and reliability (See Cariello [0012]).
Therefore it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the invention to further assign priority by ranking as taught by Cariello for the benefit of improved data retention and reliability to arrive at the invention as specified in the claims.
RESPONSE TO ARGUMENTS
The rejection of claims 1-3,5-6,11-1,16-21, 22 and 24 under Kuzmin and 4 and 23 under Kuzmin in view of Ito are withdrawn.
CONCLUSION Applicant's 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 nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) 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 mailing date of this final action.
DIRECTION OF FUTURE CORRESPONDENCES
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/KALPIT PARIKH/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2137
KALPIT . PARIKH
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2137
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