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 .
Response to Amendment
This is a reply to the amendment filed on 01/23/2026, in which, claim(s) 1-20 are pending. Claim(s) 1, 5, 10 and 19 are amended. No claim(s) are cancelled or newly added.
Response to Arguments
Claim Objection:
Applicant’s arguments with respect to objection of claim(s) 5 and 10 have been considered. The objection of claim(s) 5 and 10 have been withdrawn in view of the amendment to claim.
Claim Rejections - 35 U.S.C. § 102 and 35 U.S.C. § 103:
Applicants’ arguments, see pages 6-8, filed 01/23/2026, regarding the U.S.C. 102 and 103 rejections of Claims 1-20 have been fully considered and are not persuasive.
Regarding claims 1 and 19, applicants argue that the amended claim 1 feature, “the command is communicated from the hardware-based security architecture driver to the EC independently of the host OS”, overcomes the outstanding rejections.
Applicant’s arguments regarding claims 1 and 19 have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection.
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 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.
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.
Claims 1-2, 5-7, and 11-15, 19-20, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Liu et al. (US 2017/0010884 A1) in view of Oleksii Surdu (US 2018/0032733 A1) further in view of Durham et al. (US 2005/0216577 A1).
Regarding Claim 1, Liu discloses An Information Handling System (IHS), comprising:
a heterogenous computing platform configured to execute a host Operating System (OS) ([0029], “an information handling system may be provided with one or more processing devices that may perform the functions of host processing device 106”, [0020], “Host processing device 106 may be an in-band processing device configured to run a host operating system (OS)”); and
an Embedded Controller (EC) integrated into or coupled to the heterogenous computing platform ([0029], “an information handling system may be provided with one or more processing devices that may perform the functions of host processing device 106, out-of-band processing device 108, etc. Examples of such processing devices include, but are not limited to, central processing units (CPUs), embedded controllers”), the EC configured to:
receive, from a driver of the heterogenous computing platform, a command to perform or trigger a diagnostic operation ([0030], “methodology 200 starts in step 202 with system startup (e.g., system power-on or restart), and proceeds to LoadImage( ) call in step 204 of power-on-self-test (POST) where a given particular individual executable hardware driver or other code image component (e.g., patch code including executable BIOS code, binaries (e.g., third-partied binaries), microcode, microcode, ME/IE firmware, etc.) are called by BIOS 142”); and
respond to the command ([0030], “Methodology 200 then proceeds to step 206 for each individual called image component (e.g., driver) from step 204”).
Liu does not explicitly teach but Surdu teaches
a driver is a hardware-based security architecture driver ([0015], “a security architecture such as TrustZone from ARM Ltd or other method to run a hardware-protected security monitor and a conventional OS at the same time on a single processor core”),
Liu and Surdu are analogous art as they are in the same field of endeavor of information security. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Surdu with the disclosure of Liu. The motivation/suggestion would have been so it cannot be modified or bypassed by an OS (Surdu, [0015]),
The combined teaching of Liu and Surdu does not explicitly teach but Durham teaches
wherein the command is communicated from the driver to the EC independently of the host OS ([0051], “pre-boot execution environment (PXE) operations may be offloaded from a host processor (i.e., independently of the host OS) to the embedded controller agent and/or embedded firmware agent”),
Liu, Surdu and Durham are analogous art as they are in the same field of endeavor of information security. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Durham with the combined teaching of Liu and Surdu. The motivation/suggestion would have been to avoid inefficiencies experienced by conventional systems.
Regarding Claim 2, the combined teaching of Liu, Surdu and Durham teaches
wherein the heterogenous computing platform comprises: a System-On-Chip (SoC), a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), or an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) (Liu, [0029], “Examples of such processing devices include, but are not limited to, central processing units (CPUs), embedded controllers, microcontrollers, application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), etc.”).
Regarding Claim 5, the combined teaching of Liu, Surdu and Durham teaches
wherein the command is received by the EC from the heterogenous computing platform over an Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C), Improved I2C (I3C), Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), or Enhanced SPI (eSPI) bus (Liu, [0003], “The server system BIOS caches the information from the personality module in a section of a serial peripheral interface (SPI) chip”).
Regarding Claim 6, the combined teaching of Liu, Surdu and Durham teaches
wherein the hardware-based security architecture comprises a TRUSTZONE architecture (Surdu, [0015], “a security architecture such as TrustZone from ARM Ltd”).
Regarding Claim 7, the combined teaching of Liu, Surdu and Durham teaches
wherein the command is issued by a Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) of the heterogenous computing platform during a Driver Execution Environment (DXE) phase of a boot sequence (Liu, [0005], “In a BIOS implementation case, the injected code of the code injection module may in one embodiment be executed as early as the Driver Execution Environment (DXE) phase”).
Regarding Claim 11, the combined teaching of Liu, Surdu and Durham teaches
wherein the EC is configured to:
receive, from the hardware-based security architecture driver, another command to perform or trigger another diagnostic operation; queue the other diagnostic operation (Liu, [0030], “methodology 200 starts in step 202 with system startup (e.g., system power-on or restart), and proceeds to LoadImage( ) call in step 204 of power-on-self-test (POST) where a given particular individual executable hardware driver or other code image component (e.g., patch code including executable BIOS code, binaries (e.g., third-partied binaries), microcode, microcode, ME/IE firmware, etc.) are called by BIOS 142”); and
respond to the other command (Liu, [0030], “Methodology 200 then proceeds to step 206 for each individual called image component (e.g., driver) from step 204”).
Regarding Claim 12, the combined teaching of Liu, Surdu and Durham teaches
wherein the command and the other command are received in a same request issued by a Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) of the heterogenous computing platform to the hardware-based security architecture driver (Liu, [0034], “where BIOS 142 proceeds with loading or not loading the given called image component (e.g., driver) from the existing image of BIOS 142 depending on system policy”, Surdu, [0015]).
Regarding Claim 13, the combined teaching of Liu, Surdu and Durham teaches
wherein the EC is configured to perform or trigger one or more diagnostic operations in the queue based, at least in part, upon a policy (Liu, [0034], “then methodology 200 proceeds to step 216 where BIOS 142 proceeds with loading or not loading the given called image component (e.g., driver) from the existing image of BIOS 142 depending on system policy”).
Regarding Claim 14, the combined teaching of Liu, Surdu and Durham teaches
wherein the policy comprises one or more rules usable by the EC to determine an order in which to perform or trigger the one or more diagnostic operations based, at least in part, upon context information (Liu, [0034], “Next, in step 228, BIOS 142 may perform the UEFI function of connecting controllers for device handles. Among other things, in step 228, BIOS 142 may determine which drivers have higher priority, determine load order sequence, and initialize and connect drivers that support binding protocol. In particular, drivers from code of CIM 144 may be loaded first for a given device or class of devices if they are higher priority than the existing drivers of BIOS 142 for the same given device or class of devices”).
Regarding Claim 15, the combined teaching of Liu, Surdu and Durham teaches
wherein the context information comprises at least one of: a location of the IHS, an identity of a user of the IHS, a host Operating System (OS) of the IHS, or a network connectivity of the HIS (Liu, [0020], “Bus 103 provides a mechanism for the various components of system 104 to communicate and couple with one another. Host processing device 106 may be an in-band processing device configured to run a host operating system (OS)”).
Regarding Claim 19, Liu discloses An heterogenous computing platform, comprising:
a host processor configured to execute a Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) and a host Operating System (OS) ([0030], “BIOS executed on host processing device”, [0019], “host processing device 106 that runs system BIOS and host OS”); and
an Embedded Controller (EC) coupled to the host processor ([0029], “an information handling system may be provided with one or more processing devices that may perform the functions of host processing device 106, out-of-band processing device 108, etc. Examples of such processing devices include, but are not limited to, central processing units (CPUs), embedded controllers”), wherein the BIOS is configured to:
transmit to the EC, through a driver of the heterogenous computing platform over an Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C), Improved I2C (I3C), Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), or Enhanced SPI (eSPI) bus, a command to perform or trigger a diagnostic operation with respect to a device coupled to the EC ([0003], “The server system BIOS caches the information from the personality module in a section of a serial peripheral interface (SPI) chip”, [0030], “methodology 200 starts in step 202 with system startup (e.g., system power-on or restart), and proceeds to LoadImage( ) call in step 204 of power-on-self-test (POST) where a given particular individual executable hardware driver or other code image component (e.g., patch code including executable BIOS code, binaries (e.g., third-partied binaries), microcode, microcode, ME/IE firmware, etc.) are called by BIOS 142”); and
receive a response from the EC ([0030], “Methodology 200 then proceeds to step 206 for each individual called image component (e.g., driver) from step 204”),
Liu does not explicitly teach but Surdu teaches
a driver is a hardware-based security architecture driver ([0015], “a security architecture such as TrustZone from ARM Ltd or other method to run a hardware-protected security monitor and a conventional OS at the same time on a single processor core”),
Liu and Surdu are analogous art as they are in the same field of endeavor of information security. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Surdu with the disclosure of Liu. The motivation/suggestion would have been so it cannot be modified or bypassed by an OS (Surdu, [0015]).
The combined teaching of Liu and Surdu does not explicitly teach but Durham teaches
wherein the command is transmitted from the driver to the EC independently of the host OS ([0051], “pre-boot execution environment (PXE) operations may be offloaded from a host processor (i.e., independently of the host OS) to the embedded controller agent and/or embedded firmware agent”),
Liu, Surdu and Durham are analogous art as they are in the same field of endeavor of information security. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Durham with the combined teaching of Liu and Surdu. The motivation/suggestion would have been to avoid inefficiencies experienced by conventional systems.
Regarding Claim 20, the combined teaching of Liu, Surdu and Durham teaches
wherein the command is transmitted during a Driver Execution Environment (DXE) phase of a boot sequence (Liu, [0005], “In a BIOS implementation case, the injected code of the code injection module may in one embodiment be executed as early as the Driver Execution Environment (DXE) phase”).
Claims 3 and 4 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Liu et al. (US 2017/0010884 A1) in view of Oleksii Surdu (US 2018/0032733 A1) further in view of Durham et al. (US 2005/0216577 A1) and further in view of Quinn et al. (US 2020/0042045 A1).
Regarding Claim 3, the combined teaching of Liu, Surdu and Durham does not explicitly teach but Quinn teaches
wherein the heterogenous computing platform comprises a Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) processor coupled to an interconnect ([0047], “embedded processors implementing any of a variety of Instruction Set Architectures (ISAs), such as an x86 ISA or a Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) ISA”),
Liu, Surdu, Durham and Quinn are analogous art as they are in the same field of endeavor of information security. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Quinn with the combined teaching of Liu, Surdu and Durham. The motivation/suggestion would have been to provide an IHS allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information (Quinn, [0003]).
Regarding Claim 4, the combined teaching of Liu, Surdu, Durham and Quinn teaches
wherein the interconnect comprises at least one of: an Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture (AMBA) bus, a QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) bus, or a HyperTransport (HT) bus (Quinn, [0048], “utilize a QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) bus to communicate with processor”).
Claims 8-9, and 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Liu et al. (US 2017/0010884 A1) in view of Oleksii Surdu (US 2018/0032733 A1) further in view of Durham et al. (US 2005/0216577 A1) and further in view of Liu et al. (US 2020/0042710 A1; hereinafter “Liu 2710”).
Regarding Claim 8, the combined teaching of Liu, Surdu and Durham does not explicitly teach but “Liu 2710” teaches
wherein the EC is configured to perform or trigger the diagnostic operation in the absence of any System Management Interrupt (SMI) by the heterogenous computing platform ([0024], “By segregating BIOS code 171 to flash device 170 and BIOS data 173 to flash device 172, runtime processes can maintain uninterrupted access to BIOS data 173”),
Liu, Surdu, Durham and “Liu 2710” are analogous art as they are in the same field of endeavor of information security. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of “Liu 2710” with the combined teaching of Liu, Surdu and Durham. The motivation/suggestion would have been to providing a root of trust (“Liu 2710”, [0001]).
Regarding Claim 9, the combined teaching of Liu, Surdu and Durham does not explicitly teach but “Liu 2710” teaches
wherein the EC is configured to perform or trigger the diagnostic operation concurrently with one or more diagnostic operations performed by the heterogenous computing platform (Liu, [0024], “By segregating BIOS code 171 to flash device 170 and BIOS data 173 to flash device 172, runtime processes can maintain uninterrupted access to BIOS data 173 while BMC 190 can have concurrent access to BIOS code 171”).
Liu, Surdu, Durham and “Liu 2710” are analogous art as they are in the same field of endeavor of information security. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of “Liu 2710” with the combined teaching of Liu, Surdu and Durham. The motivation/suggestion would have been to providing a root of trust (“Liu 2710”, [0001]).
Regarding Claim 10, the combined teaching of Liu, Surdu and Durham does not explicitly teach but “Liu 2710” teaches
wherein to perform or trigger the diagnostic operation, the EC is configured to communicate with at least one of: a fan, a cable, a battery, a temperature sensor, or a display identified based, at least in part, upon the command ([0020], “communicating with external devices, and various input and output (I/O) devices, such as a keyboard, a mouse, and a video display”).
Liu, Surdu, Durham and “Liu 2710” are analogous art as they are in the same field of endeavor of information security. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of “Liu 2710” with the combined teaching of Liu, Surdu and Durham. The motivation/suggestion would have been to providing a root of trust (“Liu 2710”, [0001]).
Claims 16-18, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Liu et al. (US 2017/0010884 A1) in view of Oleksii Surdu (US 2018/0032733 A1).
Regarding Claim 16, Liu discloses
In an Information Handling System (IHS) comprising a heterogenous computing platform having a host processor and an Embedded Controller (EC) coupled to the host processor ([0029], “an information handling system may be provided with one or more processing devices that may perform the functions of host processing device 106, out-of-band processing device 108, etc. Examples of such processing devices include, but are not limited to, central processing units (CPUs), embedded controllers”), a method comprising:
receiving, by the EC from a driver of the heterogenous computing platform, a command to trigger a diagnostic operation, wherein the command is issued by a Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) ([0030], “methodology 200 starts in step 202 with system startup (e.g., system power-on or restart), and proceeds to LoadImage( ) call in step 204 of power-on-self-test (POST) where a given particular individual executable hardware driver or other code image component (e.g., patch code including executable BIOS code, binaries (e.g., third-partied binaries), microcode, microcode, ME/IE firmware, etc.) are called by BIOS 142”); and
handling the command ([0030], “Methodology 200 then proceeds to step 206 for each individual called image component (e.g., driver) from step 204”),
Liu does not explicitly teach but Surdu teaches
a driver is a hardware-based security architecture driver ([0015], “a security architecture such as TrustZone from ARM Ltd or other method to run a hardware-protected security monitor and a conventional OS at the same time on a single processor core”),
Liu and Surdu are analogous art as they are in the same field of endeavor of information security. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Surdu with the disclosure of Liu. The motivation/suggestion would have been so it cannot be modified or bypassed by an OS (Surdu, [0015]).
Regarding Claim 17, the combined teaching of Liu and Surdu teaches
not triggering the diagnostic operation based, at least in part, upon a policy (Liu, [0030], “then methodology 200 proceeds to step 216 where BIOS 142 proceeds with loading or not loading the given called image component (e.g., driver) from the existing image of BIOS 142 depending on system policy”).
Regarding Claim 18, the combined teaching of Liu and Surdu teaches
triggering another diagnostic operation based, at least in part, upon a policy (Liu, [0031], “if BIOS 142 determines in step 206 that a given individual component (e.g., driver) of the called image is present in a CIM module 144, then methodology 200 proceeds to step 208 where BIOS 142 proceeds with authenticating the given individual component of the called CIM image”).
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CHENG-FENG HUANG whose telephone number is (571)272-6186. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday: 9 am - 5 pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Eleni A Shiferaw can be reached at (571) 272-3867. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/CHENG-FENG HUANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2497
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