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 .
Double Patenting
The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on nonstatutory double patenting provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with the examined application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. See MPEP § 717.02 for applications subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA as explained in MPEP § 2159. See MPEP § 2146 et seq. for applications not subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
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Claim 1 provisionally rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claim 1 of copending Application No. 18602384 in view of Suryanarayana [20230146526]
The claim limitation of the instant application is taught by the application No. 18602384. But the reference application does not teach orchestrator is configured to apply a Best-Known Configuration (BKC) to the plurality of nodes.
However Suryanarayana [20230146526] teaches the orchestrator is configured to apply a Best-Known Configuration (BKC) to the plurality of nodes [0038: ” a container engine 304 may provide containers 302A-N with firmware versioning information regarding previous firmware images, such as previous BIOS images, of the information handling system that encountered no, or fewer, errors specifically identified for each container 302A-N. As shown in FIG. 3, multiple firmware images 312A-N, such as BIOS reference code firmware version images, stored in a NVRAM 308 of an information handling system, may be tagged 314A-N as container-specific best known configurations for the containers 302A-N executed by the information handling system 300. A container-specific best known configuration firmware version management engine 306 may include one or more tags 314A-N identifying best known configuration firmware versions for each container 302A-N, and may provide a container, such as through container engine 304, with a best-known configuration if a firmware rollback is desired. A best-known configuration for a container may, for example, include a reference code versioned BIOS image and/or one or more container-specific firmware settings. As one example, if a BIOS for an information handling system 300 concurrently executing containers 302A-N is updated, a BIOS executed by the containers 302A-N may be updated”- executes the BIOS with best known configuration]
It would have been obvious to person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teaching of Kumar and Suryanarayana because both are directed toward firmware booting. Furthermore, Suryanarayana improves upon teaching of Kumar by being able to select best configuration for the system such that device can perform in the best mode.
Similarly claim 17 and 19 is rejected based on the reasoning set forth above.
Similarly, claim 2-6 is taught by the reference patents 2-6
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) 1-8,16-19, is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kumar et al [20240160431], in view of Suryanarayana [20230146526]
As to claim 1,
Kumar et al [20240160431] teach An Information Handling System (IHS), comprising: a controller, wherein the controller comprises firmware that, upon execution by a processing core, causes the processing core to instantiate an orchestrator [0016: “CPU or processor in a server platform or network interface device to boot from boot code by loading boot code from memory of a management controller, instead of loading the boot code from a flash memory. FIG. 2 depicts an example of boot image loading from a memory of a management controller by a system.” and 0018; “boot controller 203 can be implemented using a CPU core or a thread of a multi-threaded core. Boot controller 203 can load boot firmware image 222 from memory 212 of management controller 210.” – booting instantiates And 0017: “management controller 210 can be implemented as one or more of: Board Management Controller (BMC), Intel® Management or Manageability Engine (ME), or other devices.”]; and a plurality of devices coupled to the controller[0017: “Management controller 210 can perform management and monitoring capabilities for system administrators to monitor operation at least of host 200 and devices connected thereto, such as, network interface device 250 and storage device 260, using channels, including channels that can communicate data (e.g., in-band channels) and out-of-band channels. ” and see 0031], wherein each device comprises firmware that, upon execution by a corresponding processing core, causes the corresponding processing core to instantiate a node as part of a firmware framework framework [0043: “an administrator or orchestrator can provide microcode capsule along with meta-data to the management controller. The management controller can authenticate the meta-data (e.g., target platform information, family, models, versions, etc.) to verify the microcode capsule is to be written to the target platform. ” and 0031: “Boot firmware image server 400 can communicate with servers 410-1 to 410-X in a secure manner (e.g., encrypted communications). In some examples, server 400 can transmit image 402 as a multipart HTTP Push request in accordance with section 7.2 (The Multipart Content-Type), RFC 1341 (1992). For example, boot firmware image server 400 can configure one or more of management controllers 412-0 to 412-X so that loading of boot firmware 402 by a boot controller occurs from a memory of management controller.”- individual controllers boots]
But does not explicitly teach the orchestrator is configured to apply a Best-Known Configuration (BKC) to the plurality of nodes.
However, Suryanarayana [20230146526] teaches the orchestrator is configured to apply a Best-Known Configuration (BKC) to the plurality of nodes [0038:” a container engine 304 may provide containers 302A-N with firmware versioning information regarding previous firmware images, such as previous BIOS images, of the information handling system that encountered no, or fewer, errors specifically identified for each container 302A-N. As shown in FIG. 3, multiple firmware images 312A-N, such as BIOS reference code firmware version images, stored in a NVRAM 308 of an information handling system, may be tagged 314A-N as container-specific best known configurations for the containers 302A-N executed by the information handling system 300. A container-specific best known configuration firmware version management engine 306 may include one or more tags 314A-N identifying best known configuration firmware versions for each container 302A-N, and may provide a container, such as through container engine 304, with a best-known configuration if a firmware rollback is desired. A best known configuration for a container may, for example, include a reference code versioned BIOS image and/or one or more container-specific firmware settings. As one example, if a BIOS for an information handling system 300 concurrently executing containers 302A-N is updated, a BIOS executed by the containers 302A-N may be updated”- executes the BIOS with best known configuration]
It would have been obvious to person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teaching of Kumar and Suryanarayana because both are directed toward firmware booting. Furthermore, Suryanarayana improves upon teaching of Kumar by being able to select best configuration for the system such that device can perform in the best mode.
As to claim 2,
Kumar teaches the controller comprises an Embedded Controller (EC) or Baseband Management Controller (BMC) [0017: “management controller 210 can be implemented as one or more of: Board Management Controller (BMC), Intel® Management or Manageability Engine (ME), or other devices.”]
As to claim 3,
Kumar teaches the plurality of devices comprises at least one of: a sensor, a sensor hub, a Central Processing Unit (CPU), a Graphical Processing Unit (GPU), an audio Digital Signal Processor (aDSP), a Neural Processing Unit (NPU), a Tensor Processing Unit (TSU), a Neural Network Processor (NNP), an Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU), an Image Signal Processor (ISP), or a Video Processing Unit (VPU), a camera controller, an audio controller, a memory, a Universal Serial Bus (USB) device, a Peripheral Component Interconnect express (PCIe) device, or a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) [0054:” System 900 includes processor 910, which provides processing, operation management, and execution of instructions for system 900. Processor 910 can include any type of microprocessor, central processing unit (CPU), graphics processing unit (GPU), XPU, processing core, or other processing hardware to provide processing for system 900, or a combination of processors. An XPU can include one or more of: a CPU, a graphics processing unit (GPU), general purpose GPU (GPGPU), and/or other processing units (e.g., accelerators or programmable or fixed function FPGAs). Processor 910 controls the overall operation of system 900, and can be or include, one or more programmable general-purpose or special-purpose microprocessors, digital signal processors (DSPs), programmable controllers, application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), programmable logic devices (PLDs), or the like, or a combination of such devices.”].
As to claim 4,
Kumar teaches at least one of the plurality of devices is coupled to the controller via at least one of: a Systems-on-Chip (SoC) interconnect, a Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) bus, or a Universal Serial Bus (USB) port [0018: “Interface 230 can provide communication using one or more of the following protocols: Improved Inter Integrated Circuit (I3C), Universal Serial Bus Type-C (USB-C), serial peripheral interface (SPI), enhanced SPI (eSPI), System Management Bus (SMBus), I2C, MIPI I3C®, Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe), Compute Express Link (CXL). See, for example, Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) Base Specification 1.0 (2002), as well as earlier versions, later versions, and variations thereof. See, for example, Compute Express Link (CXL) Specification revision 2.0, version 0.7 (2019), as well as earlier versions, later versions, and variations thereof.”].
As to claim 5,
Kumar teaches SoC interconnect comprises at least one of: an Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture (AMBA) bus, a QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) bus, or a HyperTransport (HT) bus [0065; “ system 900 can be implemented using interconnected compute sleds of processors, memories, storages, network interfaces, and other components. High speed interconnects can be used based on: Ethernet (IEEE 802.3), remote direct memory access (RDMA), InfiniBand, Internet Wide Area RDMA Protocol (iWARP), Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP), quick UDP Internet Connections (QUIC), RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE), Peripheral Component Interconnect express (PCIe), Intel QuickPath Interconnect (QPI), Intel Ultra Path Interconnect (UPI), Intel On-Chip System Fabric (IOSF), Omni-Path, Compute Express Link (CXL), high-speed fabric, NVLink, Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture (AMBA) interconnect, OpenCAPI, Gen-Z, Infinity Fabric (IF), Cache Coherent Interconnect for Accelerators (CCIX), 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) (4G), 3GPP 5G, and variations thereof. Data can be copied or stored to virtualized storage nodes or accessed using a protocol such as NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) or NVMe (e.g., a non-volatile memory express (NVMe) device can operate in a manner consistent with the Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) Specification, revision 1.3c, published on May 24, 2018 (“NVMe specification”) or derivatives or variations thereof).”]
As to claim 6,
Kumar teaches the BKC comprises, for each of the plurality of nodes, a set of one or more firmware modules, packages, or versions to be used during operation of the firmware framework [0017: “Management controller 210 can perform management and monitoring capabilities for system administrators to monitor operation at least of host 200 and devices connected thereto, such as, network interface device 250 and storage device 260, using channels, including channels that can communicate data (e.g., in-band channels) and out-of-band channels. Out-of-band channels can include packet flows or transmission media that communicate metadata and telemetry and may not communicate data.” And 0031: “Boot firmware image server 400 can communicate with servers 410-1 to 410-X in a secure manner (e.g., encrypted communications). In some examples, server 400 can transmit image 402 as a multipart HTTP Push request in accordance with section 7.2 (The Multipart Content-Type), RFC 1341 (1992). For example, boot firmware image server 400 can configure one or more of management controllers 412-0 to 412-X so that loading of boot firmware 402 by a boot controller occurs from a memory of management controller.” ].
As to claim 7,
Kumar teaches the BKC comprises, for each of the plurality of nodes, a set of one or more capabilities to be exposed during operation of the firmware framework [0042: “If the processor supports microcode update staging mechanism, the processor reports such capability to the OS and the OS could make use of the microcode update staging interface to stage the microcode before activating the microcode ”].
As to claim 8,
Kumar teaches the orchestrator is configured to identify the BKC based, at least in part, upon a Look-Up Table (LUT) of different BKCs, wherein each of the different BKCs associates (i) selected one or more nodes with (ii) selected one or more firmware modules, packages, versions, or capabilities for each of the selected nodes [0043: “an administrator or orchestrator can provide microcode capsule along with meta-data to the management controller. The management controller can authenticate the meta-data (e.g., target platform information, family, models, versions, etc.) to verify the microcode capsule is to be written to the target platform. ” ].
As to claim 16:
Suryanarayana teach orchestrator is configured to receive the BKC from a remote service, and wherein the remote service is configured to receive the BKC from another HIS [0026: “0030 : “container may, for example, be a virtual machine executed by the information handling system 100 for execution of an instance of an operating system by the information handling system 100. Thus, for example, multiple users may remotely connect to the information handling system 100, such as in a cloud computing configuration, to utilize resources of the information handling system 100, such as memory, CPUs, and other hardware, firmware, and software capabilities of the information handling system 100. Parallel execution of multiple containers by the information handling system 100 may allow the information handling system to execute tasks for multiple users in parallel secure virtual environments. ””].
As to claim 17,
Kumar teaches As to claim 17, 17. A method, comprising: producing, via a controller, an orchestrator of a firmware framework; and producing, via a plurality of devices coupled to the controller, [ [0017: “Management controller 210 can perform management and monitoring capabilities for system administrators to monitor operation at least of host 200 and devices connected thereto, such as, network interface device 250 and storage device 260, using channels, including channels that can communicate data (e.g., in-band channels) and out-of-band channels. ”]] a plurality of nodes in the firmware framework [0043: “an administrator or orchestrator can provide microcode capsule along with meta-data to the management controller. The management controller can authenticate the meta-data (e.g., target platform information, family, models, versions, etc.) to verify the microcode capsule is to be written to the target platform. ” and 0029: “management controller 210 could provide boot firmware for multiple host systems (e.g., multiple different boot processors) at a time. ”- framework], wherein the orchestrator is configured to apply one or more firmware modules, packages, versions, or capabilities to each of the plurality of nodes independently of any Operating System (OS) of the HIS [0042: “If the processor supports microcode update staging mechanism, the processor reports such capability to the OS and the OS could make use of the microcode update staging interface to stage the microcode before activating the microcode ” and 0044: “the SMM code injection capsule (e.g., a driver) along with meta-data can be provided by an administrator or orchestrator to management controller. Management controller can verify the meta-data associated with the SMM code injection capsule (e.g., target platform information, family, models, versions, etc.) to verify the SMM code injection capsule is to be written to the target platform. If verified, the management controller can copy the SMM code injection capsule to the processor-executed SMM through Memory-Mapped BMC Interface (MMBI), input/output (I/O), or memory interface and trigger an SMI. The SMM can be implemented as a processor-executed operating mode for handling system operations including power management, hardware control, or proprietary designed code. ” and 0050: “the processor can execute the microcode without an OS agent deploying the microcode.” ]
But does not explicitly teach wherein the orchestrator is configured to apply a Best-Known Configuration (BKC) of one or more firmware modules, packages, versions, or capabilities to each of the plurality of nodes
However Suryanarayana [20230146526 ] the orchestrator is configured to apply a Best-Known Configuration (BKC) of one or more firmware modules, packages, versions, or capabilities to each of the plurality of nodes [0038: ” a container engine 304 may provide containers 302A-N with firmware versioning information regarding previous firmware images, such as previous BIOS images, of the information handling system that encountered no, or fewer, errors specifically identified for each container 302A-N. As shown in FIG. 3, multiple firmware images 312A-N, such as BIOS reference code firmware version images, stored in a NVRAM 308 of an information handling system, may be tagged 314A-N as container-specific best known configurations for the containers 302A-N executed by the information handling system 300. A container-specific best known configuration firmware version management engine 306 may include one or more tags 314A-N identifying best known configuration firmware versions for each container 302A-N, and may provide a container, such as through container engine 304, with a best known configuration if a firmware rollback is desired. A best known configuration for a container may, for example, include a reference code versioned BIOS image and/or one or more container-specific firmware settings. As one example, if a BIOS for an information handling system 300 concurrently executing containers 302A-N is updated, a BIOS executed by the containers 302A-N may be updated ”]
It would have been obvious to person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teaching of Kumar and Suryanarayana because both are directed toward firmware booting. Furthermore, Suryanarayana improves upon teaching of Kumar by being able to select best configuration for the system such that device can perform in the best mode.
As to claim 18,
Suryanarayana teaches wherein to apply the BKC, the orchestrator is configured to arbitrate a conflict between a node’s setting and the BKC based, at least in part, upon a policy. [0037: “if a user of an information handling system with multiple concurrently executed containers rolls back a version of a BIOS due to security vulnerabilities and/or firmware issues with a current version of the BIOS with respect to a first container, rolling back the BIOS to a previous version for all containers executed by the information handling system may re-introduce errors and/or conflicts that the previous version of the BIOS has with one or more other containers of the information handling system. Use of container-specific firmware versioning through use of container-specific firmware memory map namespaces, as disclosed herein, may minimize such issues.” And 0038: “Firmware versioning dependencies of containers may be resolved by use of virtual NVRAM regions exposed to containers 302A-N as NVRAM namespaces by providing a platform NVRAM namespace policy protocol for individual container access to firmware versioning information. For example, a container engine 304 may provide containers 302A-N with firmware versioning information regarding previous firmware images, such as previous BIOS images, of the information handling system that encountered no, or fewer, errors specifically identified for each container 302A-N ”]
As to claim 19,
Combination of Kumar and Suryanarayana teach this claim according to the reasoning set forth in claim 17 supra. Furthermore, Suryanarayana teaches 0026: “FIG. 1. BMC 180 may be referred to as a service processor or embedded controller (EC). Capabilities and functions provided by BMC 180 may vary considerably based on the type of information handling system. For example, the term baseboard management system may be used to describe an embedded processor included at a server, while an embedded controller may be found in a consumer-level device.” and 0030 : “container may, for example, be a virtual machine executed by the information handling system 100 for execution of an instance of an operating system by the information handling system 100. Thus, for example, multiple users may remotely connect to the information handling system 100, such as in a cloud computing configuration, to utilize resources of the information handling system 100, such as memory, CPUs, and other hardware, firmware, and software capabilities of the information handling system 100. Parallel execution of multiple containers by the information handling system 100 may allow the information handling system to execute tasks for multiple users in parallel secure virtual environments. ”
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 9-15, 20 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.
Conclusion
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/KESHAB R PANDEY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2176