DETAILED ACTION
This Office Action, based on application 18/783,327 filed 24 July 2024, is filed in response to applicant’s amendment and remarks filed 14 April 2026. Claims 1-20 are currently pending and have been fully considered below.
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 14 April 2026 has been entered.
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 Arguments
Applicant’s remarks, submitted 14 April 2026 in response to the Office Action mailed 5 February 2026, have been fully considered below.
Claim Rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 112
The applicant traverses the indefiniteness rejection alleging the amendment to the claims clarify the relationship between data and die-level read frequency. The Office appreciates the remarks clarifying applicant’s invention and withdraws the rejection to Claim 1 and respective dependent claims. However, the Office maintains the issue is unresolved regarding Claims 8 and 15. The Office maintains Claims 8 and 15, as now presented, still fail to link any relationship between the determining of read frequencies of data to the identification of a first and second die each having a read frequency.
Claim Rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 103
The applicant traverses the prior art rejection to the claims alleging cited prior art fails to teach or suggest the claimed invention as clarified by the amended claim language of the independent claims. The Office has fully reviewed applicant’s remarks and issues new grounds of rejection responsive to applicant’s clarifying amendment.
Claim Objections
The following claims are objected to due to informalities:
Claim 1: “determine, for the plurality of dies, a corresponding read frequency based on read operations directed to data stored in a die of the plurality of dies” should be “determine, for each die of the plurality of dies, a corresponding read frequency based on read operations directed to data stored in the die of the plurality of dies” in order to remove any interpretation ambiguity.
Claim 11: “wherein the relation causes the second die to have a subsequent corresponding read frequency above the second threshold”.
Claim 18: See objection to Claim 11 for recommended amendment addressing grammar.
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 8-20 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 8 (and similarly Claim 15) recites “identifying a first die of the plurality of dies having the corresponding read frequency …”. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. While the claim is further limited to “determining corresponding read frequencies of data stored at a plurality of dies …”, the limitation provides antecedent basis for read frequencies for ‘data’ and not a particular read frequency for ‘a first die’. The Office recommends incorporating the ‘determine’ limitation (as proposed in the objection) of Claim 1 to overcome the instant rejection. Based on applicant’s remarks presented in the “Rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 112” section of the response filed 14 April 2026 and further based on how Claim 8 is presented, the process for determining a read frequency for a particular storage device die may possibly be thought of as a two-step process: (1) determining read frequencies for data stored on the particular die, and (2) determining an ‘overall’ read frequency of the particular die based on the read frequencies for the data (e.g. by taking the sum of the plurality of data frequencies - ¶[0283]) stored on the particular die.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Claim(s) 1, 4-8, 11-15, and 18-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over INGLIS et al (US PGPub 2023/0068214) in further view of VIRMANI (US PGPub 2017/0132059) and OGAWA et al (US PGPub 2015/0164398).
With respect to Claim 1 (and similarly Claims 8 and 15), INGLIS discloses a storage system comprising:
a plurality of solid-state storage devices comprising a plurality of dies (¶[0037] - “The system reduces failure rates of devices. In hard drives, this can occur by avoiding high head movement (which may lead to hot drives and write amplification) by sequentially writing and load balancing. Alternatively, this can occur by minimizing cell updates and spreading load, for example in the case of NAND devices.”); and
a storage controller comprising a processing device (¶[0065] – “[0065] In use, each node 104 may act as a storage controller by directly interfacing with data storage 110. The node 104 as storage controller may implement this by running a driver on its processor”), operatively coupled to the plurality of solid-state storage devices (¶[0065] – “The storage controller can then interface directly with each of the one or more storage arrays 112”; Fig 1 illustrates Storage Arrays 112 comprise Storage Devices 114), configured to:
determine, for the plurality of dies, a corresponding read frequency (¶[0301] – “If a single storage device, or a single part of a storage device, is being used disproportionately, this can lead to early failure compared to other comparable storage devices..”; ¶[0122] – “A storage array or node may comprise sensors that monitor in substantially real-time the performance and/or status of each individual storage device”);
identify a first die of the plurality of dies, the first die having the corresponding read frequency above a first threshold (¶[0301] – “If a single storage device, or a single part of a storage device, is being used disproportionately {analogous to ‘above a first threshold’}, this can lead to early failure compared to other comparable storage devices); and
relocate first data from the first die, wherein the relocation causes the first die to have a subsequent corresponding read frequency below the first threshold (¶[0301] – “Consequently, the system may move data so that all storage devices are read from or written to a relatively similar frequency. Other types of storage devices may benefit from consistent read rates, consistent write rates, consistent power usage, scheduled down time, or other device specific characteristics”).
INGLIS may not explicitly disclose wherein the corresponding read frequency is based on read operations directed to data stored in a die of the plurality of dies; and identify a second die of the plurality of dies having the corresponding read frequency below a second threshold.
However, VIRMANI discloses identify a second die of the plurality of dies having the corresponding read frequency below a second threshold (¶[0037] – “the server may receive the usage rate information from a first drive and the usage rate information from a second drive. The usage rate from each drive may indicate that the first drive is being used proportionately more than the second drive. Accordingly, the server may generate an notification indicating the first drive may be overused in relation to the second drive”).
INGLIS and VIRMANI are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor of optimizing data placement among storage devices. Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of INGLIS and VIRMANI before him or her, to modify the monitoring of INGLIS to include identifying a target drive for load balancing as taught by VIRMANI. A motivation for doing so would have been to determine the most disproportionally used drives as subjects for load balancing (¶[0037]). Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine INGLIS and VIRMANI to obtain the invention as specified in the instant claims.
INGLIS and VIRMANI may not explicitly disclose wherein the corresponding read frequency is based on read operations directed to data stored in a die of the plurality of dies.
However, OGAWA discloses wherein the corresponding read frequency is based on read operations directed to data stored in a die of the plurality of dies (¶[0054] – “If the volumes of loads caused by respective load components are different, a load component is selected in consideration of the volume of loads per load component. It is preferable to calculate the volume of loads per load component prior to Step S1. For example, when data managed by each computer are used as the load component, the computer N.sub.1 monitors access to respective data managed by the computer N.sub.1, records the frequency of access to those data, evaluates loads of data for each set of data depending upon the frequency of access, and selects a combination of sets of data such that the sum of loads of the data is the same as the load or is as close to the load as possible”)
INGLIS, VIRMANI, and OGAWA are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor of optimizing data placement among storage devices. Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of INGLIS, VIRMANI, and OGAWA before him or her, to modify the monitoring of the combination of INGLIS and VIRMANI to include monitoring individual data access rates to determine a component access rate as taught by OGAWA. A motivation for doing so would have been to provide a method for determining the usage rate of a storage device. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine INGLIS, VIRMANI, and OGAWA to obtain the invention as specified in the instant claims.
With respect to Claim 4 (and similarly Claims 11 and 18), the combination of INGLIS, VIRMANI, and OGAWA disclose the storage system of claim 1.
INGLIS further discloses wherein the relocation causes the second die to have a subsequent corresponding read frequency above the second threshold (¶[0301] – “Consequently, the system may move data so that all storage devices are read from or written to a relatively similar frequency. Other types of storage devices may benefit from consistent read rates, consistent write rates, consistent power usage, scheduled down time, or other device specific characteristics”).
With respect to Claim 5 (and similarly Claims 12 and 19), the combination of INGLIS, VIRMANI, and OGAWA disclose the storage system of claim 1.
INGLIS further discloses wherein the first die and the second die are located on differing solid state storage devices (¶[0301] – “If a single storage device, or a single part of a storage device, is being used disproportionately, this can lead to early failure compared to other comparable storage devices..”; ¶[0301] – “Consequently, the system may move data so that all storage devices are read from or written to a relatively similar frequency”).
With respect to Claim 6 (and similarly Claim 13), the combination of INGLIS, VIRMANI, and OGAWA disclose the storage system of claim 1.
VIRMANI further discloses wherein the first threshold is greater than the second threshold (¶[0037] – “the server may receive the usage rate information from a first drive and the usage rate information from a second drive. The usage rate from each drive may indicate that the first drive is being used proportionately more than the second drive. Accordingly, the server may generate an notification indicating the first drive may be overused in relation to the second drive”).
With respect to Claim 7 (and similarly Claims 14 and 20), the combination of INGLIS, VIRMANI, and OGAWA disclose the storage system of claim 1.
INGLIS further discloses wherein the plurality of solid-state storage devices comprises a plurality of managed flash storage devices, managed by a controller external to the plurality of solid-state storage devices (Fig 1 illustrates Node Manager 106 and Load Balancer 108 external to Storages 110 comprising Storage Devices 114).
Claim(s) 2, 3, 9, 10, 16, and 17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over INGLIS in further view of VIRMANI, OGAWA, and CHEN (US PGPub 2024/0103759).
With respect to Claim 2 (and similarly Claims 9 and 16), the combination of INGLIS, VIRMANI, and OGAWA disclose the storage system of claim 1.
INGLIS, VIRMANI, and OGAWA may not explicitly disclose wherein the first data is relocated as part of a refresh operation to refresh the data stored at the storage system.
However, CHEN discloses wherein the first data is relocated as part of a refresh operation to refresh the data stored at the storage system (¶[0060] - the data rearrangement procedure may also be combined in other data moving procedure, such as … a read refresh procedure for moving the data having a read count greater than a predetermined read count threshold to a new memory block”).
INGLIS, VIRMANI, OGAWA, and CHEN are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor of optimizing data placement among storage devices. Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of INGLIS, VIRMANI, OGAWA, and CHEN before him or her, to modify the basis for load balancing of the combination of INGLIS, VIRMANI, and OGAWA to include refresh procedures as taught by CHEN. A motivation for doing so would have been to avoid errors in the data stored in non-volatile memory due to reading interference. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine INGLIS, VIRMANI, OGAWA, and CHEN to obtain the invention as specified in the instant claims.
With respect to Claim 3 (and similarly Claims 10 and 17), the combination of INGLIS, VIRMANI, and OGAWA disclose the storage system of claim 2.
CHEN further discloses wherein a frequency that the refresh operation is performed is based on at least one of a performance parameter or an endurance of the plurality of dies (¶[0060 – read count).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ERIC T LOONAN whose telephone number is (571)272-6994. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8am-5pm.
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/ERIC T LOONAN/Examiner, Art Unit 2137
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