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 .
Claims 1-20 are pending.
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 are 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.
The term “proximate” in claims 1, 9, and 15 is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term “proximate” 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.
With respect to the remaining dependent claims, they are rejected under 35 USC § 112(b) by virtue of inheriting the limitations of their respective parent/base claims.
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, 9, and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Romagnoli (US 2003/0135621) in view of Zhang et al. (US 2007/0091098).
With respect to claim 1, Romagnoli discloses: generate one or more data flow graphs for one or more software programs associated with the one or more jobs being executed ([0062], the data flow graph is built by an application for jobs. Paragraph [0011] states that programs correspond to jobs. The programs/jobs are interpreted by the examiner to correspond to applicant’s software programs);
while the one or more software programs are executing, (i) convert the one or more data flow graphs to time-scale and, based at least on the converted one or more data flow graphs, (ii) estimate a start time of an idle period that will be incurred by a first CPU ( [0061], [0064]);
identify a first thread from a process from amongst the plurality of processes that will be ready for execution at the estimated start time of the idle period ([0066]-[0067], where tasks correspond to “thread”); and
execute the first thread on the first CPU proximate to an actual start time of the idle period (id.).
Romagnoli does not specifically disclose: a GPU bank comprising a plurality of GPUs and configured to execute a plurality of processes of one or more jobs; and a computing platform including a memory, and one or more computing processor devices in communication with the memory, wherein the memory stores a GPU optimization platform, executable by at least one of the one or more computing processor devices.
However, Zhang discloses: a GPU bank comprising a plurality of GPUs and configured to execute a plurality of processes of one or more jobs; and a computing platform including a memory, and one or more computing processor devices in communication with the memory, wherein the memory stores a GPU optimization platform, executable by at least one of the one or more computing processor devices (Abstract, Fig. 3).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Zhang to appreciate the processing power of multiple GPU by minimizing idle time as suggested by Ramagnoli by bin packing tasks in idle slots of the multiple GPUs executing tasks.
With respect to claims 9 and 15, they recite similar limitations as claim 1 and are therefore rejected under the same citations and rationale.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-8, 10-14, 16-20 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: The prior art, alone or in any reasonable combination with the independent claim, does not disclose in response to identifying the first thread and prior to executing the first thread on the first GPU, transfer results of intermediate computations from one or more registers of the first GPU to a ‘secondary’ memory. Even if any reference discloses the above limitation, combining said limitation by one or ordinary skill in the art would constitute impermissible hindsight reasoning as no motivation to combine can be ascertained.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Jensen et al. (US 2007/0294695): Divides a computing job into micro-jobs and allocate the execution of the micro-jobs to times when needed resources comply with one or more idleness criteria is provided. The micro-jobs are executed on an ongoing basis, but only when the resources needed by the micro-jobs are not needed by other jobs. A software program utilizing this methodology may be run at all times while the computer is powered up without impacting the performance of other software programs running on the same computer system..
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to WISSAM RASHID whose telephone number is (571)270-3758. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8:00 am-5:00 pm.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Aimee Li can be reached at (571)272-4169. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/WISSAM RASHID/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2195
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