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 .
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 06/30/2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
This office action is responsive to amendment filed on 06/30/2026. The Examiner has acknowledged claims 16-19 have been amended. Claims 1, 5, 8 and 12 have been canceled. Claims 2-4, 6-7, 9-11 and 13-19 have been presented for examination and are rejected.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's argument, filed on 06/30/2026 has been entered and carefully considered.
Applicant's arguments and amendment filed on June 30th, 2026 with respect rejected to claims 2-4, 6-7, 9-11 and 13-19 under 35 U.S.C. 103 have been considered, but are moot in view of the new ground of rejection necessitated by Applicant's amendment.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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 of this title, 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 4, 11 and 15-19, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li et al. (US 20240427598 hereinafter Li) in view of Liljedahl et al. (GB 2589370 hereinafter Liljedahl).
With respect to claims 16, 17, 18 and 19, Li teaches a system comprising a first network device and a second network device (Li, see paragraph [0014] the first network device may send each network packet to a respectively corresponding remote network device (referred to as a second network device)), wherein:
the first network device is to transmit a remote atomic command over a network remotely to the second network device (Li, see paragraph [0028] a compare command, a send/receive command, an atomic compare and swap command (i.e., referred to as an atomic compare and write command), an atomic add command (which may also be referred to as an atomic compare and add command), Paragraph [0030] further discloses after receiving the target execution instruction sent by the first computer device, the first network device generates, according to the target execution instruction, a corresponding network packet that may be referred to as a target network packet. Then, the first network device further sends the target network packet to the second network device),
the remote atomic command comprising a target address, a compare value, and a swap value (Li, see Parag. [0028] The atomic compare and swap command is used to perform atomic swap with a comparison condition and a mask on fifth data of a preset quantity of bytes. … The exclusive atomic command is used to obtain exclusive access permission for a local or remote memory address(i.e., equivalent to target address ) according to a cache coherence protocol); and
the second network device is configured to, responsively to receiving the remote atomic command (Li, see Parag. [0028] a send/receive command, an atomic compare and swap command, and an exclusive atomic command. The load command is used to fetch first data of a preset quantity of bytes from a local memory address, or fetch second data of a preset quantity of bytes from a remote memory address)
(i) locally perform a comparison between a value stored at the target address and the compare value (Li, see Parag. [0038] The load command is used to fetch first data of a preset quantity of bytes from a local memory address, or fetch second data of a preset quantity of bytes from a remote memory address. The store command is used to write third data of a preset quantity of bytes into the local memory address, or write fourth data of a preset quantity of bytes into the remote memory address. ... The compare command is used to compare local or remote data. The atomic compare and swap command is used to perform atomic swap with a comparison condition …), and
Li yet fails to explicitly disclose (ii)update the target address with the swap value only if the compare value is larger than the value stored at the target address, without further intervention from the first network device.
However, Liljedahl discloses update the target address with the swap value only if the compare value is larger than the value stored at the target address, without further intervention from the first network device (Liljedahl, see page 4, lines 30-31wherein success of the write operation is contingent on the write-attempt value being greater than a current value at the data item location,…FIG. 8 and Page 27, lines 1-8, further discloses the method for the use of an atomic CAS max operation, in order to successfully perform the attempt to update the head pointer to one slot beyond the last retired slot this operation is contingent on the value being written being larger than the value already stored at the target write location. When this condition is found to be true at step 81 then the flow proceeds to step 82 and the head pointer is successfully updated to point to one slot beyond the last retired slot,…).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was effectively filed to combine the teaching Li with the teaching Liljedahl to provide the system for atomic data integrity by updating a target address with a swap value based on a comparison. The comparison and the update are performed as a single, atomic step at the hardware level, ensuring that no other device can alter the target address in between the comparison and the update, preventing race conditions.
With respect to claims 4, 11 and 15, Li-Liljedahl teaches the system, wherein the second network device is to execute the command atomically( Li, see paragraph [0432] The atomic compare and add command, namely, an atomic add command, is used to perform an atomic add operation with a comparison condition on sixth data of a preset quantity of bytes. The atomic compare and add command has synchronous and asynchronous modes that are specified by flags. This command atomically executes the following semantics: compare data at a destination address with a comparison value).
Claims 2-3, 6-7, 9-10 and 13-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li et al. (US 20240427598 hereinafter Li) in view of Liljedahl et al. (GB 2589370 hereinafter Liljedahl) further in view of Parambil et al. (US 20200341940 hereinafter Parambil).
With respect to claims 2, 6, 9 and 13, Li-Liljedahl -Parambil teaches the system, wherein the command is embedded in a transport protocol used by the first and second network devices.
However, Parambil disclose wherein the command is embedded in a transport protocol used by the first and second network devices (Parambil, see paragraph [0011] the networks may include an Internet Protocol (IP) network, such as an IP network using Transmission Control Protocol (TCP/IP), and/or a Remote Direct Memory Access protocol network. Each of the server devices 104a-c may include or be in communication with one or more data storage devices 110a-c. Together the server devices 104a-c provide a distributed file system 108).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was effectively filed to combine the teaching Li-Liljedahl with the teaching Parambil to provide a system for embedding a Compare-and-Swap (CAS) command directly into a transport protocol (e.g., within RDMA or customized TCP/UDP headers) offers a significant advantages in high-performance networked systems by moving synchronization from the application layer down to the network hardware/operating system level.
With respect to claims 3, 7, 10 and 14, Li-Liljedahl-Parambil teaches the system, wherein the transport protocol is a Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) protocol (Parambil, see paragraph [0011] the networks may include an Internet Protocol (IP) network, such as an IP network using Transmission Control Protocol (TCP/IP), and/or a Remote Direct Memory Access protocol network (RDMA)).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. This includes:
PG. Pub. US 20170103039 System for implementing RDMA-based B-Tree key-value store on large numbers of networked computing devices, has networked computing devices for performing lock-free write operation to reserve particular memory location.
PG. Pub. US 20250298616 Apparatus for accessing memory system, has processing circuitry providing comparison condition outcome indication indicating whether compare value satisfied comparison condition, where comparison indication comprises target value.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ELIZABETH KASSA whose telephone number is (571)270-0567. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday -Friday 9 AM -6 PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ario Etienne can be reached on 517-272-4001. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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07/10/2026
/ELIZABETH KASSA/Examiner, Art Unit 2457
/ARIO ETIENNE/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2457
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