DETAILED ACTION
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 arguments filed 12/17/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
In response to applicant’s arguments with regard to the independent claim 1 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) that the combination of the references does not teach/suggest the claimed feature “packet” because Smith’s command and response do not appear to be transferred in form of “packet” as they involve deserializing and serializing operations; applicant's arguments have fully been considered, but are not found to be persuasive.
The examiner respectfully disagrees, and to further clarify, deserialize and serialize operations for transferring data are directed on how data/packets are being transferred (e.g. parallel/serial), it does not indicated the data/packets being transferred would be in a different form. Additionally, as packet is a unit of data being communicated over computing architecture, the examiner is equating command and response being unit of data (packet) that are being communicated.
In response to applicant’s arguments with regard to the independent claim 1 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) that the combination of the references does not teach/suggest the claimed feature “channel identifier” because one skilled in the art would not interpret Subdhu’s key containing destination information to disclose the above claimed features; applicant's arguments have fully been considered, but are not found to be persuasive.
The examiner respectfully disagrees, and to further clarify, Subdhu’s does teach/suggest the above claimed feature as routing of packet(s) through the router to a output port (e.g. channel) associated with the destination is based on Subdhu’s key (col. 4, ll. 30-51).
In response to applicant’s arguments with regard to the dependent claims 7-12 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) that if the next Office Action contains a rejection, such rejection should be Non-Final; applicant's arguments have fully been considered, but are not found to be persuasive.
The examiner respectfully disagrees, and to further clarify, applicant’s amendment of independent claim 6, to which claims 7-12 depended upon, would necessitated the new grounds of rejection as presented in the current Office action.
I. REJECTIONS BASED ON PRIOR ART
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.
Claims 1-4 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Smith et al. (US Patent 10,015,087) in view of Sindhu et al. (US Patent 5,905,725).
As per claim 1, Smith teaches/suggests an integrated circuit (IC), comprising: a bus interface configured to be coupled to a plurality of lanes in a communication bus (e.g. associated with MOCB crossbar’s interface for coupling to target interface (140) and initiator interface (142) in Fig. 2B: col. 6, ll. 33-42); and a crossbar (e.g. associated with MOCB Crossbar (108)) coupled to the bus interface and configured to: receive data; and route to a first memory (e.g. associated with write command which writes to a given address of corresponding storage/memory: col. 8, ll. 33-66) (Fig. 2A-2B; Fig. 4A-4B; col. 6, l. 41 to col. 9, l. 49; and col. 10, ll. 1-59).
Smith does not teach the IC comprising:
having a first packet from a first lane;
read a channel identifier in the first packet; and
route the first packet based on the channel identifier.
Sindhu teaches/suggests a system comprising: having a first packet from a first lane (e.g. associated with receiving packet at an input port (107): col. 4, ll. 30-51); read a channel identifier in the first packet (e.g. associated with reading key from packet: col. 4, ll. 30-51); and route the first packet based on the channel identifier (e.g. associated with forwarding the packet to output port (180) based on key: col. 4, ll. 30-51) (Fig. 2B; and col. 4, ll. 14-51).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in this art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to include Sindhu’s data transferring architecture into Smith’s IC for the benefit of implementing an architecture that efficiently manage and route packets (Sindhu, col. 2, ll. 66-67) to obtain the invention as specified in claim 1.
As per claim 2, Smith and Sindhu teach/suggest all the claimed features of claim 1 above, where Smith and Sindhu further teach/suggest the IC comprising integrated into a modem (Smith, Fig. 2A-2B; Fig. 4A-4B; col. 6, l. 41 to col. 9, l. 49; col. 10, ll. 1-59; and Sindhu, Fig. 2B; col. 4, ll. 14-51).
As per claim 3, Smith and Sindhu teach/suggest all the claimed features of claim 1 above, where Smith and Sindhu further teach/suggest the IC comprising wherein the crossbar is further configured to: receive a second packet from a second lane; read a second channel identifier in the second packet; and determine that the second packet is routed to the first memory (Smith, Fig. 2A-2B; Fig. 4A-4B; col. 6, l. 41 to col. 9, l. 49; col. 10, ll. 1-59; and Sindhu, Fig. 2B; col. 4, ll. 14-51).
As per claim 4, Smith and Sindhu teach/suggest all the claimed features of claim 1 above, where Smith and Sindhu further teach/suggest the IC further comprising a frequency domain processing circuitry configured to operate on the first packet in a frequency domain (Smith, Fig. 2A-2B; Fig. 4A-4B; col. 6, l. 41 to col. 9, l. 49; col. 10, ll. 1-59; and Sindhu, Fig. 2B; col. 2, ll. 63-67; col. 4, ll. 14-51; col. 11, ll. 58-62).
As per claim 13, claim 13 is rejected in accordance to the same rational and reasoning as the above rejection of claim 1, where Smith and Sindhu further teach/suggest the IC comprising: wherein each lane of the plurality of lanes consists of a physical electrical conductor (e.g. associated with port(s) being physical that would have conducted electrical signal when communicating packet(s)) (Smith, Fig. 2A-2B; Fig. 4A-4B; col. 6, l. 41 to col. 9, l. 49; col. 10, ll. 1-59; and Sindhu, Fig. 2B; 5B; 11A; col. 2, ll. 63-67; col. 4, ll. 21-61; col. 5, l. 36 to col. 6, l. 13; col. 7, ll. 51-54; col. 8, ll. 18-29; col. 11, l. 51 to col. 12, l. 6; and col. 13, ll. 11-14)
Claim 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Smith et al. (US Patent 10,015,087) in view of Sindhu et al. (US Patent 5,905,725) as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of BUNCE et al. (US Pub.: 2019/0044553).
As per claim 5, Smith and Sindhu teach/suggest all the claimed features of claim 1 above, where Smith and Sindhu further teach/suggest the IC further comprising the bus interface is configured operate with packets are present on the communication bus (Smith, Fig. 2A-2B; Fig. 4A-4B; col. 6, l. 41 to col. 9, l. 49; col. 10, ll. 1-59; and Sindhu, Fig. 2B; col. 4, ll. 14-51), but Smith and Sindhu do not teach to enter a low-power mode when no data.
BUNCE teach/suggest a system comprising to enter a low-power mode when no data ([0030]; and [0058]).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in this art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to include BUNCE’s low-power mode into Smith and Sindhu’s IC for the benefit of implementing a dynamic power saving architecture (BUNCE, [0006]-[0007]) to obtain the invention as specified in claim 5.
Claims 6, 8-9, and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ma (US Pub.: 2017/0153852) in view of Sindhu et al. (US Patent 5,905,725) and BUNCE et al. (US Pub.: 2019/0044553).
As per claim 6, Ma teaches/suggests a method comprising: aggregating packets from a plurality of channels into a shared memory structure (e.g. associated with receiving ingress packets from a plurality of ingress ports for storing into packet buffer (110) in Fig. 1: Fig. 1; [0027]-[0028]); draining the packets from the shared memory structure onto lanes of a communication bus (e.g. associated with reading packet from packet buffer and output to corresponding egress port: Fig. 1, [0027]-[0029]); and operating the shared memory structure, with the communication bus, wherein: the shared memory structure comprises a plurality of memory banks ([0030]); aggregating the packets into the shared memory structure comprises partitioning a packet into a plurality of units ([0028]); and storing each one unit of the plurality of units in a corresponding one memory bank of the plurality of memory banks ([0028]-[0030]) (Fig. 1; and [0027]-[0031]).
Ma does not teach the method comprising:
when memory is drained, putting to sleep.
being equal in number to a number of the plurality of memory banks.
Sindhu teaches/suggests a method comprising: being equal in number to a number of the plurality of memory banks (e.g. associated with packet length being arbitrary, such that the number of cells resulted from dividing the packet may be equal to the number of memory banks: col. 4, ll. 51-61; col. 7, ll. 53-54; col. 12, ll. 19-21) (Fig. 2B; 5B; 11A; col. 4, ll. 21-61; col. 5, l. 54 to col. 6, l. 13; col. 7, ll. 51-54; col. 8, ll. 18-29; col. 11, l. 51 to col. 12, l. 6; and col. 13, ll. 11-14).
BUNCE teach/suggest a method comprising when memory is drained, putting to sleep ([0030]; and [0058]).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in this art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to include Sindhu’s cell switching architecture and BUNCE’s low-power mode into Ma’s method for the benefit of implementing a switching architecture that efficiently manages and routes packets (Sindhu, col. 2, ll. 63-67) and implementing a dynamic power saving architecture (BUNCE, [0006]-[0007]) to obtain the invention as specified in claim 6.
As per claim 8, Ma, Sindhu and BUNCE teach/suggest all the claimed features of claim 6 above, where Ma, and Sindhu further teach/suggest the method further comprising conducting arbitration between the plurality of channels as the packets are aggregated into the shared memory structure (Ma, Fig. 1; [0027]-[0031]; and Sindhu, Fig. 2B; 5B; 11A; col. 4, ll. 21-61; col. 5, l. 36 to col. 6, l. 13; col. 7, ll. 51-54; col. 8, ll. 18-29; col. 11, l. 51 to col. 12, l. 6; and col. 13, ll. 11-14).
As per claim 9, Ma, Sindhu and BUNCE teach/suggest all the claimed features of claim 6 above, where Ma, and Sindhu further teach/suggest the method further comprising conducting arbitration between the lanes of the communication bus as the packets are drained from the shared memory structure (Ma, Fig. 1; [0027]-[0031]; and Sindhu, Fig. 2B; 5B; 11A; col. 4, ll. 21-61; col. 5, l. 36 to col. 6, l. 13; col. 7, ll. 51-54; col. 8, ll. 18-29; col. 11, l. 34 to col. 12, l. 6; and col. 13, ll. 11-14).
As per claim 12, Ma, Sindhu and BUNCE teach/suggest all the claimed features of claim 6 above, where Ma, and Sindhu further teach/suggest the method comprising wherein draining the packets onto the lanes of the communication bus comprises draining a first packet onto a single lane of the communication bus (Ma, Fig. 1; [0027]-[0031]; and Smith, Fig. 2B; 5B; 11A; col. 4, ll. 21-61; col. 5, l. 36 to col. 6, l. 13; col. 7, ll. 51-54; col. 8, ll. 18-29; col. 11, l. 51 to col. 12, l. 6; and col. 13, ll. 11-14).
II. CLOSING COMMENTS
CONCLUSION
STATUS OF CLAIMS IN THE APPLICATION
The following is a summary of the treatment and status of all claims in the application as recommended by M.P.E.P. 707.07(i):
CLAIMS REJECTED IN THE APPLICATION
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.
DIRECTION OF FUTURE CORRESPONDENCES
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CHUN KUAN LEE whose telephone number is (571)272-0671. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday.
IMPORTANT NOTE
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Idriss Alrobaye can be reached on (571) 270-1023. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/CHUN KUAN LEE/Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2181 February 11, 2026