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 – 20 are pending.
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.
Claim(s) 1, 3 – 5, and 8 – 10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by US Patent No. 11,775,470 (hereinafter Harriman).
As per claim 1, Harriman teaches a method for searching a buffer of a non-volatile storage host controller comprising: obtaining a command-based identifier of a command when a system level setting of a first format is enabled (Harriman; Col 9 Lines 18 – 23, Col 10 Lines 3 – 19); and checking format information on whether the first format or a second format is used to execute the command according to the identifier (Harriman; Col 10 Lines 3 – 19, Col 10 Line 50 – Col 11 Line 5).
As per claim 3, Harriman also teaches wherein the identifier is a specific part of descriptors of the command for determining whether to use the first format or the second format (Harriman; Col 10 Lines 3 – 19).
As per claim 4, Harriman also teaches if the specific part is a 0, using the second format (Harriman; Col 15 – Col 30 Table A).
As per claim 5, Harriman also teaches if the specific part is a 1, using the first format (Harriman; Col 15 – Col 30 Table A).
As per claim 8, Harriman also teaches wherein the identifier is a value stores in a register of the command (Harriman; Col 10 Lines 3 – 19).
As per claim 9, Harriman also teaches if the value is 0, using the second format (Harriman; Col 15 – Col 30 Table A).
As per claim 10, Harriman also teaches if the value is 1, using the first format (Harriman; Col 15 – Col 30 Table A).
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(s) 13 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US Patent No. 11,775,470 (hereinafter Harriman) in view of US Patent No. 11,790,961 (hereinafter Cariello).
As per claim 13, Harriman teaches the invention as described per claim 1 (see rejection of claim 1 above).
Harriman does not teach wherein the non-volatile storage is UFS or NVMe.
However, Cariello teaches using a PCIe interconnect (Cariello; Col 3 Lines 16 – 22) to connect a host to a UFS storage device (Cariello; Col 2 Lines 56 – 63).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the teachings of Harriman to include the UFS storage because doing so allows for usage of known and widely used storage systems.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2, 6, 7, 11, 12, and 14 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.
Claims 15 – 20 are allowable.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Claim 2 would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims because the prior art of record fails to teach or suggest alone or in combination checking a data buffer offset; and obtaining a physical region description (PRD) according to the data buffer offset and the format information, as required by dependent claim 2, in combination with the other claimed limitations (emphasis added). The prior art of record teaches a host connected to a storage device and using a physical region description table format (Figure 5), but does not teach obtaining the PRD according to the data buffer offset and the format information, as required by dependent claim 2. US Patent No. 11,775,470 teaches a system which executes commands of different formats based on an identifier (Col 10 Lines 3 – 19, Col 10 Line 50 – Col 11 Line 5), but does not teach obtaining the PRD according to the data buffer offset and the format information, as required by dependent claim 2.
Claims 6 and 7 would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims because the prior art of record fails to teach or suggest alone or in combination using the first format with a last data byte count (LDBC) and a common data size (CDS) if the first format is to be used, and a data buffer offset is a multiple of a common data size (CDS), as required by dependent claim 6, in combination with the other claimed limitations (emphasis added). The prior art of record teaches a host connected to a storage device and using a physical region description table format (Figure 5), but does not teach the specific LDBC and CDS usage in the first format, as required by dependent claim 6. US Patent No. 11,775,470 teaches a system which executes commands of different formats based on an identifier (Col 10 Lines 3 – 19, Col 10 Line 50 – Col 11 Line 5), but does not teach the specific LDBC and CDS usage in the first format, as required by dependent claim 6.
Claim 7 is also allowable because of its dependence upon allowable dependent claim 6.
Claims 11 and 12 would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims because the prior art of record fails to teach or suggest alone or in combination using the first format with a last data byte count (LDBC) and a common data size (CDS) if the first format is to be used, as required by dependent claim 11, in combination with the other claimed limitations (emphasis added). The prior art of record teaches a host connected to a storage device and using a physical region description table format (Figure 5), but does not teach the specific LDBC and CDS usage in the first format, as required by dependent claim 11. US Patent No. 11,775,470 teaches a system which executes commands of different formats based on an identifier (Col 10 Lines 3 – 19, Col 10 Line 50 – Col 11 Line 5), but does not teach the specific LDBC and CDS usage in the first format, as required by dependent claim 11.
Claim 12 is also allowable because of its dependence upon allowable dependent claim 11.
Claim 14 would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims because the prior art of record fails to teach or suggest alone or in combination wherein the first format is 2 double word physical region description table (2DW PRDT) format and the second format is 4 double word physical region description table (4DW PRDT) format, as required by dependent claim 14, in combination with the other claimed limitations (emphasis added). US Patent No. 10,599,591 teaches a host connected to a storage device and using a physical region description table format (Figure 5), but does not teach the specific 2DW PRDT format and 4DW PRDT formats, as required by dependent claim 14. US Patent No. 11,775,470 teaches a system which executes commands of different formats based on an identifier (Col 10 Lines 3 – 19, Col 10 Line 50 – Col 11 Line 5), but does not teach the specific 2DW PRDT format and 4DW PRDT formats, as required by dependent claim 14.
Claims 15 – 20 are allowable because the prior art of record fails to teach or suggest alone or in combination a non-volatile storage coupled to the host, wherein the host configured to obtain a command-based identifier of a command when a system level setting of a 2 double word physical region descriptor table (2DW PRDT) format is enabled; and check whether to use the 2DW PRDT format or a 4 double word physical region descriptor table (4DW PRDT) format to execute the command according to the identifier, as required by independent claim 15, in combination with the other claimed limitations (emphasis added). US Patent No. 10,599,591 teaches a host connected to a storage device and using a physical region description table format (Figure 5), but does not teach the specific 2DW PRDT format and 4DW PRDT format configurations according to an identifier, as required by independent claim 15. US Patent No. 11,775,470 teaches a system which executes commands of different formats based on an identifier (Col 10 Lines 3 – 19, Col 10 Line 50 – Col 11 Line 5), but does not teach the specific 2DW PRDT format and 4DW PRDT format configurations according to an identifier, as required by independent claim 15.
Claims 16 – 20 are also allowable because of their dependence, either directly or indirectly, upon allowable independent claim 15.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to RICHARD B FRANKLIN whose telephone number is (571)272-0669. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8:30am-5pm.
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/RICHARD B FRANKLIN/ Examiner, Art Unit 2181