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 .
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 1-5, 13, 15-18, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Zhu et al (2019/0281018).
Regarding claims 1, 15, and 20, Zhu discloses a method, a system, and a network interface controller (see system in figure 2 and network interface card in figure 3) comprising one or more circuits to: receive a packet (see The NIC 203 can assign a plurality of data packets to the processors 207a-207n in paragraph 0035); identify one or more bits in the packet (see Symmetric RSS is a process of mapping data packets in both the forward and backward directions through the same connection, providing load-balancing on the same processing core or processor in a computing system. LSB based symmetric RSS refers to an RSS process based on least significant bits of a hash value of a data packet in paragraph 0025); and forward the packet to a receiving queue based on the identified one or more bits in the packet (see queue 1 to queue n in figure 3; The indirection table 307 may be indexed by LSBs of the hash value in preconfiguring of the indirection table 307. The indirection table 307 may direct the controller 301 of the NIC 203 to route each of the plurality of data packets to a destination queue 309a, 309b, . . . , or 309n. Each of the destination queues corresponds to a processor in paragraph 0037).
Regarding claims 2 and 15, Zhu discloses the one or more circuits are comprised by a network interface controller (NIC) (see network interface card in figure 3)).
Regarding claims 3 and 16, Zhu discloses identifying the one or more bits comprises identifying a protocol associated with the packet (see The data packets may employ communication protocols such as, TCP or UDP. A data packet comprises a header and a payload in paragraph 0023; The receiving data packet 401 may have a header and payload. The header may be 5-tuple comprising the source IP address, the source port number, the destination IP address, the destination port number, and the protocol type (TCP or UDP) in paragraph 0040).
Regarding claims 4 and 17, Zhu discloses the receiving queue is associated with a core of a processor, wherein the core is dedicated to processing packets (see Each of the destination queues corresponds to a processor in paragraph 0037; Symmetric RSS is a process of mapping data packets in both the forward and backward directions through the same connection, providing load-balancing on the same processing core or processor in a computing system in paragraph 0025).
Regarding claims 5 and 18, Zhu discloses identifying the one or more bits is performed by one of a programmable processing unit, an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), and a logic circuit (see ASIC in paragraph 0029).
Regarding claim 13, Zhu discloses the receiving queue is one of a plurality of receiving queues, and wherein each receiving queue is associated with a respective core of a processor (see Each of the destination queues corresponds to a processor in paragraph 0037).
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 6-12, 14, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhu in view of Coughlan et al (12,067,415).
Regarding claims 6 and 19, Zhu discloses The indirection table 307 may direct the controller 301 of the NIC 203 to route each of the plurality of data packets to a destination queue 309a, 309b, . . . , or 309n. Each of the destination queues corresponds to a processor (see paragraph 0037) and The controller 301 may be configured to execute computer program instructions stored in the memory 303 (see paragraph 0035) but doesn't specifically disclose the identifying of the one or more bits in the packet is based at least in part on a user-configured algorithm. However, Coughlan discloses a user can attempt to make RSS configuration changes (see col. 2, line 59 to col. 3, line 10). The claim would have been obvious because a person of ordinary skill has good reason to pursue the known options within his or her technical grasp. If this leads to the anticipated success, it is likely the product not of innovation but of ordinary skill and common sense.
Regarding claim 7, Zhu discloses identifying the one or more bits comprises calculating a value based on the configured algorithm (see For symmetric RSS, the hash values 407 can be calculated through the following hash function in paragraph 0044).
Regarding claim 8, Zhu discloses the configured algorithm is associated with a state (see state in paragraphs 0029, 0035, 0069).
Regarding claim 9, Coughlan discloses the user-configured algorithm is configured according to a current CPU use status (see the RSS configuration component may check whether the network interface driver is supported for RSS. Some network interface drivers may not be supported for RSS, as they do not implement certain network interface configuration features required to enable RSS in some embodiments in col. 13, lines 7-19 and user make RSS configuration changes in col. 2, line 59-col. 3, line 10).
Regarding claim 10, Coughlan discloses identifying the one or more bits in the packet comprises calculating one or more user-defined functions (see The hash function may return hash values that are calculated based on the source and destination information (e.g., IP address and ports) in the packet in col. 13, lines 41-59).
Regarding claim 11, Zhu discloses the configured algorithm uses one or more hardware metadata registers as an input (see register in paragraphs 0037-0038).
Regarding claim 12, Zhu discloses identifying the one or more bits in the packet comprises using one or more hardware components to perform one or more of a checksum calculation and a parsing of layers in the packet (see The controller 301 of the NIC 203 may parse and identify the areas in the header of the receiving data packet 401 based on the hash type to generate a corresponding hash value 407 in paragraph 0042).
Regarding claim 14, Zhu discloses traffic is balanced across a plurality of cores of a processor (see load balancing between the processors 207a-207n in paragraphs 0039).
Conclusion
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/BRIAN D NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2475