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 .
Specification
The disclosure is objected to because of the following informalities: Paragraph 4 includes the word "primitive" instead of "primitives."
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-20 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Independent Claim 1 recites “outputting, by the mesh shader in response to an input of the graphics data, legacy mesh shader output parameters including vertices and primitives, and additional data with a meshlet bounding-box, or axis-aligned bounding box (AABB) structure”. The examiner is unclear as to the intended meaning of this recitation, in particular, the claim is grammatically structured such that the meshlet bounding box or alternatively the AABB is used in the processing of graphics data. However, the claim is unclear as to whether the meshlet bounding box is sending to the tiler its input and generating by the tiler a visibility stream since there is no further recitation in the independent or dependent claims that explain the meshlet bounding box.
Independent claims 10 and 19 have similar recitation, thus claims 1, 10, and 19 are unclear and indefinite. Claims 2-9, 11-18, and 20 inherent this indefiniteness from the independent claims they depend on.
The term “smallest possible rectangle or polygon” in Claim 6 is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term “smallest possible” is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention.
The term “smallest possible storage size” in Claim 7 is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term “smallest possible” is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention.
For the purposes of examination, claims 1-20 will be rejected as best understood by the examiner.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-20 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: Prior art fails to fairly suggest the processing graphics data system of claim 10 wherein “A system for processing graphics data, comprising: a compiler; and a graphics rendering pipeline comprising a mesh shader and a tiler, coupled with the compiler, and configured such that: in response to an input of the graphics data, the mesh shader outputs legacy mesh shader output parameters including vertices and primitives, and additional data with a meshlet bounding-box, or axis-aligned bounding box (AABB) structure; wherein the processing includes: in a first pass, the compiler instructs the AABB being sent to the tiler as an input, and the tiler then generates a visibility stream accordingly, wherein each entity of the visibility stream indicates that the AABB is fully visible, partially visible, or invisible in the view frustum; and in a consecutively second pass, the compiler instructs the visibility stream being sent back to the tiler as a further input along with the legacy mesh shader output parameters for coming rasterization in a fragment pass.”
Independent claims 1 and 19 recite similar limitations, and thus claims 1-20 would be allowable if the 112b rejection above is overcome.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure: Neff et al. (U.S. Pg Pub No. US 20230101978 A1) teaches a meshlet shading atlas using screen-space bounding boxes. Kjoll et al. (U.S. USPAT No. US 11361400 B1) which teaches full tile primitives in tile-based graphics processing. Decell et al. (U.S. Pg Pub No. US 20200342662 A1) teaches dynamically enabling tiling in 3D workloads. Iqbal et al. (U.S. Pg Pub No. US 20200061811 A1) teaches a robotic control system involving computer visibility information. Shefi (WIPO International Application WO 2018146667 A1) teaches a system and method for generating images of virtual objects with bounding boxes of minimal dimensions. John Hable, Visibility Buffer Rendering with Material Graphs, 2021-07-05, Filmic Worlds (Year: 2021), teaches compressing visibility data and decompressing during later use.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DAVID W SOON whose telephone number is (571) 272-8113. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7:30-5:00.
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/DAVID W SOON/Examiner, Art Unit 2615
/ALICIA M HARRINGTON/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2615