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 1-26 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.
Claim 3 is 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.
With respect to claim 3, it recites a “an inclusive range of 64 to 8000”, however, no units of measurements are provided. Units of measurement are essential for quantifying various attributes. It is not clear what unit 64 to 8000 is referring to. A search could not be conducted for prior art because of the claim’s ambiguity with respect to the unit of measurement.
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, 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, 21-26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mutlu et al. (US 2009/0217273) in view of Schofield (US 2006/0101006).
With respect to claim 1, Mutlu discloses: receiving the set of thread requests within an epoch, wherein the set of thread requests comprise instructions to a processing system to execute code; storing the set of thread requests in an autobatch buffer, wherein the autobatch buffer is a linear buffer (Abstract, paragraph [0020] defines epoch as a time interval which reads on Mutlu’s “batching periodically” outstanding threads).
Mutlu does not specifically disclose: submitting contents of the autobatch buffer in one operation, wherein one thread request in the autobatch buffer is designated a control thread, and the set of thread requests in the autobatch buffer execute a set of atomic operations; and retiring the autobatch buffer at a time the control thread indicates.
However, Schofield discloses: submitting contents of the autobatch buffer in one operation, wherein one thread request in the autobatch buffer is designated a control thread, and the set of thread requests in the autobatch buffer execute a set of atomic operations; and retiring the autobatch buffer at a time the control thread indicates ([0059], [0060], dispatcher thread corresponds to “control thread”).
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 Scholfield to accumulate requests as dispatch units, analyze them before they reach the persistent store, and rewrite or batch them so fewer operations are performed. The system maintains indices over transactions and data items to detect duplicate state changes, data conflicts, and redundant work. It can combine transaction state changes, batch dispatch units, and cancel operations that are made unnecessary by later committed operations. This reduces store interactions while preserving per-item ordering constraints
With respect to claim 2, Mutlu discloses: wherein the autobatch buffer is sized to hold a number of thread requests equal to an autobatch buffer size parameter (Abstract, “maximum number of requests” corresponds to a “buffer size parameter”).
With respect to claim 4, Mutlu discloses: wherein the autobatch buffer is a first autobatch buffer, and one of the first autobatch buffer or a second autobatch buffer is designated as an active autobatch buffer, and the storing of the set of thread requests is done in the active autobatch buffer ([0080], the nomenclatures is not indicative of its function. Therefore, any buffer that is routed a request is interpreted as being active at that time).
With respect to claim 6, Mutlu discloses: switching the active autobatch buffer to another autobatch buffer within the epoch when the active autobatch buffer indicates an overflow condition ([0128]).
With respect to claim 7, designating the another autobatch buffer as the active autobatch buffer when an in-counter and an out-counter of the another autobatch buffer is set to zero ([0106]).
With respect to claim 10, Mutlu discloses: wherein the processing system is one or more of a multicore processor, a multiprocessor system, or a streaming multiprocessor (Fig. 10).
With respect to claims 21-23, they recite similar limitations as claim 1 and are therefore rejected under the same citations and rationale.
With respect to claim 24, Mutlu discloses: wherein the parallel processing is performed using one or more cores, one or more processors, or one or more streaming processors (Fig. 10).
With respect to claim 25, Mutlu discloses: wherein the one or more processors are one or more of one or more central processing units (CPUs), one or more graphics processing units (GPUs), one or more single instruction multiple data (SIMD) processors, or one or more streaming multiprocessors (SM) (id.).
With respect to claim 26, it recites similar limitations as claim 1 and is therefore rejected under the same citations and rationale.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5, 8, 9, and 11-20 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, does not disclose, without engaging in impermissible hindsight reasoning, an active authobatch buffer that indicates an overflow condition, and retrying the storing of the set of thread requests after such indication.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Eberlein (US 9032406): A number of batch requests are received in the computing system, where each batch request includes a job reference, and a start time when the execution of the referenced job to be launched. Duration of execution is estimated for each job referenced by the requests. The estimation is based on predefined criteria that include a product of median execution times for at least one recurring operation. An anonymous load chart is created based on the start times and the estimated duration of execution of each job referenced by the plurality of batch requests. The anonymous load chart may take into account the available capacity of the computing system. The anonymous load chart is exposed to a number of isolated users of the computing system for cooperative batch scheduling.
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.
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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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