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 for examination.
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.
Claim language in the following claims is not clearly understood:
As per claim 1, line 4, it is unclear what it meant by “detecting a shark fin shapelet of response times” (i.e. how does the shapelet exist in response times? How is the response times monitored in term of the requests? Is the shapelet of the response times based on the different size of the requests or different time of the requests?)
Line 6, it is unclear how the processing of the subset of mixed-size write IO requests are throttled? (i.e. are the subset of mixed size write IO requests already processed and the response times (shark fin shapelet) are obtained, at the time of throttling? Or are the subset of mixed size write IO requests exist in a queue waiting to be processed?)
As per claim 2, line 4, it is unclear what it meant by “a set of the mixed-size write IO requests” (i.e. is it different form the subset? Is it referring to the entire mixed size write IO requests?)
Line 7, it is unclear whether “response times” are referring to the same “response times” in claim 1 (i.e. consistent term should be used with “the” or “said” if they are the same)
As per claim 3, line 7, it is unclear whether “each time window” is referring to the same “each time window (W)” in line 3-4 (i.e. consistent term should be used with “the” or “said” if they are the same)
Line 11-12, it is unclear whether “large block IO write requests” and “small block IO block write requests” are referring to portions of “the mixed size write IO requests”? (i.e. it should indicate that the requests are part of the mixed size write IO requests if they are ones of them)
As per claim 5, it is unclear whether “the N number of LBWs” is referring to the same “an N number of the outstanding LBWs” (i.e. consistent term should be used with “the” or “said” if they are the same)
As per claim 6, it is unclear whether “each outstanding LBW” is referring to one of “outstanding number of LBWs” (i.e. consistent term should be used with “the” or “said” if they are the same)
As per claim 8, it is unclear whether “IO arrival rates” are referring to same “an arrival rate” (i.e. consistent term should be used with “the” or “said” if they are the same)
As per claim 9, it is unclear whether “LBWs” are referring to the same “the outstanding number of LBWs” in claim 3 (i.e. consistent term should be used with “the” or “said” if they are the same)
As per claims 11-13, 5-6, 8-9 it has the same deficiencies as claim 1-3, 15-16, 18-19 above. Appropriate corrections are required.
As per claims 2-10, 12-20, they depend from rejected claims and do not resolve the deficiencies thereof and are therefore rejected for at least the same reasons.
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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, 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) 1-2 and 11-12 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Deguchi et al. US Pub 2021/0294497 (hereafter Deguchi) in view of Moon et al. US Pub 2025/0147690 (hereafter Moon).
As per claim 1, Deguchi teaches the invention substantially as claimed including a method comprising: receiving an input/output (IO) workload, including mixed-size write IO requests, by a storage array (para[0072-0073], FIG. 6, IO information table includes entries of write counts/second, average data length, write response time, write miss rate, thus when different size write IO requests are received by the storage system, the information is collected);
wherein a subset of the mixed-size write IO requests correspond to random write misses (RWMs) (para[0072-0073], part of the write IO requests includes write miss requests, thus indicated by the write miss rate).
Deguchi does not explicitly teach detecting a shark fin shapelet of response times for executing the mixed-size write IO requests; and dynamically throttling processing of the subset of mixed-size write IO requests in response to detecting the shark fin shapelet of response times.
However, Moon teaches detecting a shark fin shapelet of response times for executing the mixed-size write IO requests (para[0066-0067, 0140-0146], FIG. 3B and 16, monitors the write latency of the storage device, where the latency spike are detected);
and dynamically throttling processing of the subset of mixed-size write IO requests in response to detecting the shark fin shapelet of response times (para[0141-0146], in response to an increase in the monitored latency, the storage system decreases the fetch rate and increase the cache processing rate to throttle the processing of the write requests).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Moon’s teaching to Deguchi’s invention in order to provide a method of a storage device which operate in various operation modes depending on how much a write cache region is used by adjusting fetch rate and cache processing rate, which improves the performance of the storage device and reduces latency (para[0005-0006]).
As per claim 2, Deguchi and Moon teach the method of claim 1, and Deguchi teaches response times for executing the mixed-size write IO requests corresponding to the RWMs (para[0072-0073], part of the write IO requests includes write miss requests, thus indicated by the write miss rate).
In addition, Moon teaches further comprising: generating a graphical representation of the response times for executing the mixed-size write IO requests (para[0066-0067, 0140-0146], FIG. 3B and 16, graph of the write latency of the storage device, where the latency spike are detected);
identifying a burst in response times of a set of the mixed-size write IO requests (para[0066-0067, 0140-0146], FIG. 3B and 16, monitors the write latency of the storage device, where the latency spike are detected);
and determining whether the burst forms the shark fin shapelet, wherein the set of mixed-size write IO requests having response times greater than a threshold forms the shark fin shapelet (para[0141-0147], when the response time is greater than LT_R0, LT_R1, LT_R2, storage operate in a different urgent mode with different fetch and processing rates).
As per claim 11, it is an apparatus claim of claim 1 above, thus it is rejected for the same rationale.
As per claim 12, it is an apparatus claim of claim 2 above, thus it is rejected for the same rationale.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-10, 13-20 would be allowable if rewritten 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 and to include all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Joo US Pub 2023/0205303 teaches a method for storage devices capable of estimating the optimal sleep time by adjusting the sleep time used in hybrid polling for every I/O request based on the sleep result for a recent I/O request to respond to a sudden change in the I/O response time.
Xu et al. US Pub 2019/0317665 teaches The bandwidth throttling processor operates to process the congestion data collected by the congestion sensor to adaptively adjust the bandwidth limit of at least one of the classes of the storage I/O requests so that fairness control of different classes of storage I/O requests can be achieved. The bandwidth throttling processor uses any combination of the storage device latency data, the congestion level data and the fairness index data to adjust the bandwidth limit of at least one of the classes of the storage I/O requests.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TAMMY EUNHYE LEE whose telephone number is (571)270-7773. The examiner can normally be reached Mon, Tues, Thur 9PM-4PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Meng-Ai An can be reached at (571)272-3756. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/TAMMY E LEE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2195
