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 .
This office action is in response to the RCE and amendment filed on 8/26/2026.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 8/26/2026 has been entered.
Claims 1, 8, and 21 have been amended.
The objections and rejections from the prior correspondence that are not restated herein are withdrawn.
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 1-13 and 21-27 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.
Claims 1, 8, and 21 recite the limitation "the set of sequential operations" in lines 9, 8, and 12 respectively. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. The examiner recommends stating, “the sequence of operations” to refer to, “a sequence of operations,” mentioned previously in each claim.
Claims 2-7, 9-13, and 22-27 are rejected because they depend on a base claim that has been rejected and fail to cure the deficiencies of the respective base claim.
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claim(s) 1-3, 7-9, and 21-23 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bjorling et al. (US 2022/0050599), Kesiraju et al. (US 11,500,638), and Hwang (US 2023/0152973).
With respect to claim 1, Bjorling teaches of a memory buffer device comprising: a host-side interface to receive a compression request from a host device that requests compression of the selected page into a compressed page (fig. 1, 8; item 114; paragraph 30-32, 35, 68; where the interface of the data storage device exchanges data and commands from the host including the write data command to compress and write the compressed data to the non-volatile memory. Data is accessed in the memory at the page level);
a memory-side interface to communicate with the memory array (fig. 1, items 108, 116; paragraphs 31, 33, 38; where the controller communicates with the non-volatile memory via the buffer); and
a compression controller to perform a sequence of operations in response to the receiving the compression request, the set of sequential operations including determining a storage address in the memory array for storing the compressed page in association with the request (fig. 1, 8; paragraph 6, 38, 68-70; the controller maintains the pointers for each zone indicating the location the compressed data is to be written within the zone, i.e. the address),
performing compression of the selected page (fig. 1, 8; paragraph 38, 68-70; the controller includes a compression engine that compresses the data),
issuing a write operation via the memory-side interface to write the compressed page to the storage address in the memory array (fig. 1, 8; paragraph 6, 38, 68-70; the controller temporarily stores the compressed data in the write buffer before sending it to the NVM to be stored at the address).
Bjorling fails to explicitly teach of (1) a host-side interface to receive a compression request from a host device that identifies an initial address of a selected page stored to a memory array; (2) issuing a read operation via the memory-side interface to read the selected page from the initial address in the memory array identified in the request; (3) generating compression context metadata that enables the host device to subsequently obtain data from the compressed page and causing the host-side interface to output at least a subset of the compression context metadata to the host device.
However, Kesiraju teaches of a host-side interface to receive a compression request from a host device that identifies an initial address of a selected page stored to a memory array and that requests compression of the selected page into a compressed page (fig. 10; column 6, lines 25-35, column 12, lines 16-27; where an instruction that is a compression instruction is received. The wkdmc compression instruction includes the address of a source page targeted for compression);
a compression controller to perform a sequence of operations in response to the receiving the compression request, the set of sequential operations including issuing a read operation via the memory-side interface to read the selected page from the initial address in the memory array identified in the request (fig. 10; column 6, lines 25-35, column 12, lines 22-37; where if the instruction is a compression instruction, a prefetch of the page of data is initiated from the source page’s address. In the combination with Bjorling, the page of data is retrieved from Bjorling’s NVM);
determining a storage address in the memory array for storing the compressed page in association with the request (fig. 3, 10; column 6, lines 25-53, column 12, lines 12-51 where the wkdmc command supplies the address where the compressed page is to be stored upon completion of the compression operation and the compressed data is then stored at that address);
performing compression of the selected page (fig. 10; column 12, lines 38-49; where the compression operation is performed on the page of data);
issuing a write operation via the memory-side interface to write the compressed page to the storage address in the memory array (fig. 10; column 12, lines 38-49; where the results of the compression operation are stored in a write buffer and are then stored into the target location);
The combination of Bjorling and Kesiraju fails to explicitly teach of generating compression context metadata that enables the host device to subsequently obtain data from the compressed page and causing the host-side interface to output at least a subset of the compression context metadata to the host device.
However, Hwang teaches of a compression controller to perform a sequence of operations in response to the receiving the compression request, the set of sequential operations including determining a storage address in the memory array for storing the compressed page in association with the request (fig. 9; paragraph 73; where the received logical address is converted into physical address using the zone mapping table),
performing compression of the selected page (fig. 9; paragraph 73; where the data chunk is compressed using a compression algorithm),
issuing a write operation via the memory-side interface to write the compressed page to the storage address in the memory array (fig. 9; paragraph 73; where the compressed chunk is written to a superblock based on the physical address);
generating compression context metadata that enables the host device to subsequently obtain data from the compressed page, and causing the host-side interface to output at least a subset of the compression context metadata to the host device (fig. 9; paragraph 74; where the additional address information including the physical address corresponding to the compressed chunk in the superblock, offset of the compressed chunk and indexes of pages within the compressed chunk, and an index of the zone mapped to the superblock. This address information is then transmitted to the host).
Bjorling and Kesiraju are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor, as they are directed to data compression management.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art having the teachings of Bjorling and Kesiraju before the time of the effective filing of the claimed invention to incorporate the compression of data already stored in Bjorling as taught in Kesiraju. Their motivation would have been to increase the flexibility of the system.
Bjorling, Kesiraju, and Hwang are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor, as they are directed to data compression management.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art having the teachings of Bjorling, Kesiraju, and Hwang before the time of the effective filing of the claimed invention to incorporate the creation of the address information of Hwang and transmitting it to the host in the combination of Bjorling and Kesiraju as taught in Hwang. Their motivation would have been to enable the host more efficient access to the compressed data in the storage device (Hwang, paragraph 69, 74).
With respect to claim 8, the combination of Bjorling, Kesiraju, and Hwang teaches of the limitations cited and described above with respect to claim 1 for the same reasoning as recited with respect to claim 1.
With respect to claim 21, the combination of Bjorling, Kesiraju, and Hwang teaches of the limitations cited and described above with respect to claim 1 for the same reasoning as recited with respect to claim 1.
Bjorling also teaches of a memory module comprising a memory array; a memory buffer device (fig. 1; paragraph 29, 38; non-volatile memory, 110 and the controller is analogous to a memory buffer device as it stores data associated with commands in its internal memory, i.e. a buffer).
With respect to claims 2 and 22, Bjorling teaches of wherein the host-side interface further receives a request from the host device referencing the compressed page (fig. 1, 9; paragraph 30-32, 71; where a read command is received via the interface for the compressed data), and
wherein the compression controller is further configured to facilitate access to the data from the compressed page responsive to the request (fig. 1, 9; paragraph 30-32, 71-72; where the controller determines the location of the compressed data via the LBA and reads the compressed data).
With respect to claim 3 and 23, the combination of Bjorling, Kesiraju, and Hwang teaches of wherein the compression controller decompresses the compressed page based on the compression context metadata to generate a decompressed page (Bjorling fig. 9; paragraph 71-72; Hwang, fig. 9; paragraph 68-69, 73-74; where a read request occurs using the address information from the second file mapping table (claimed compression context metadata) of Hwang and in the combination, the controller determines the location of the compressed data via the address, reads the compressed data, and decompresses the compressed data), and
enables the host device to access the decompressed page via the host-side interface (Bjorling fig. 1, 9; paragraph 30, 32, 72; the controller delivers the decompressed data to the host via the interface).
The reasoning for obviousness is the same as indicated above with respect to claim 1.
With respect to claims 7 and 27, Bjorling teaches of wherein the memory buffer device is integrated in a serial-attached memory module and wherein the host-side interface comprises a serial communication link (fig. 1; paragraph 32; where the interface 114 is a serial-ATA interface or a serially attached SCSI interface. Thus, the data storage device is a serial-attached memory module).
With respect to claim 9, the combination of Bjorling, Kesiraju, and Hwang teaches of the limitations cited and described above with respect to claims 2-3 for the same reasoning as recited with respect to claims 2-3.
Bjorling also teaches of receiving, at the host-side interface of the memory buffer device, a request from the host device to decompress the compressed page (fig. 1, 9; paragraph 30-32, 71-72; where a read command is received via the interface for the compressed data which results in the compressed data being decompressed).
The reasoning for obviousness is the same as indicated above with respect to claim 1.
Claim(s) 4, 10, and 24 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bjorling, Kesiraju, and Hwang as applied to claims 2, 8, and 22 above and in further view of Nakanishi et al. (US 2022/0171724).
With respect to claims 4 and 24, Bjorling teaches of wherein the compression controller is further configured to receive a memory access from the host device for compressed data of the compressed page (fig. 1, 9; paragraph 30-32, 71-72; where a read command is received via the interface for the compressed data).
The combination of Bjorling, Kesiraju, and Hwang fails to explicitly teach of to send the compressed data to the host device via the host-side interface responsive to the memory access.
However, Nakanishi teaches of to receive a memory access from the host device for compressed data of the compressed page and to send the compressed data to the host device via the host-side interface responsive to the memory access (paragraph 56-59; where a read command for the compressed data is issued by the host, the compressed data is read from the NAND flash memory based on the command and when the frequency of read commands are high, the decoding/decompression is performed on the host side, thus the compressed data is sent to the host device via Bjorling’s interface).
Bjorling, Kesiraju, Hwang, and Nakanishi are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor, as they are directed to data compression management.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art having the teachings of Bjorling, Kesiraju, Hwang, and Nakanishi before the time of the effective filing of the claimed invention to incorporate the performing decompression in the host of the combination of Bjorling, Kesiraju, and Hwang as taught in Nakanishi. Their motivation would have been to increase the flexibility of the system to handle adverse load situations (Nakanishi, paragraph 58).
With respect to claim 10, the combination of Bjorling, Kesiraju, Hwang, and Nakanishi teaches of the limitations cited and described above with respect to claim 4 for the same reasoning as recited with respect to claim 4.
Claim(s) 5-6, 11-13, and 25-26 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bjorling, Kesiraju, and Hwang as applied to claims 1, 8, and 21 above and in further view of Iyer et al. (US 2019/0138446).
With respect to claims 5 and 25, Bjorling teaches of wherein the compression context metadata includes a pointer to the compressed page (fig. 7-8; paragraph 67, 70; where the controller returns to the host the location information (LBA) of the compressed data which was determined by the controller) and
wherein the compression controller sends the pointer to the host device via the host-side interface (fig. 7-8; paragraph 67, 70; where the controller returns to the host the location information (LBA) of the compressed data which was determined by the controller).
The combination of Bjorling, Kesiraju, and Hwang fails to explicitly teach of the compression context metadata includes one or more decompression parameters, and wherein the compression controller stores the one or more decompression parameters in uncompressed form at a physical address of the memory array associated with the compressed page.
However, Iyer teaches of the compression context metadata includes one or more decompression parameters (fig. 5; paragraph 48, 50; the compression metadata includes the compression algorithm and version id), and
wherein the compression controller stores the one or more decompression parameters in uncompressed form at a physical address of the memory array associated with the compressed page (fig. 5; paragraph 38, 43, 48, 50; where the compressed page includes the compression data stored in an uncompressed format. The compressed page including the compression metadata is stored at the physical page address for the page).
Bjorling, Kesiraju, Hwang, and Iyer are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor, as they are directed to data compression management.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art having the teachings of Bjorling, Kesiraju, Hwang, and Iyer before the time of the effective filing of the claimed invention to incorporate the compression metadata management of Iyer into the combination of Bjorling and Kesiraju. Their motivation would have been to efficiently track how the data is compressed.
With respect to claim 11, the combination of Bjorling, Kesiraju, Hwang, and Iyer teaches of the limitations cited and described above with respect to claim 5 for the same reasoning as recited with respect to claim 5.
With respect to claims 6 and 26, Bjorling teaches of wherein the host-side interface further receives a request from the host device to decompress the compressed page (fig. 1, 9; paragraph 30-32, 71-72; where a read command is received via the interface for the compressed data and the data is decompressed),
wherein the request includes the pointer to the compressed page (paragraph 71; where the host LBA of the data to be read is included in the command).
Iyer teaches of wherein the compression controller is further configured to retrieve the one or more decompression parameters in response to the request (paragraph 48, 63-64; where the compression algorithm and compression algorithm version from the compression metadata are used to decompress the data).
The reasoning for obviousness is the same as indicated above with respect to claim 5.
With respect to claim 12, Bjorling teaches of receiving, at the host-side interface, a request from the host device to access the compressed page, the request including the pointer to the compressed page (fig. 1, 9; paragraph 30-32, 71-72; where a read command is received via the interface for the compressed data. The command includes the host LBA of the data and the data is decompressed).
Iyer teaches of retrieving the one or more decompression parameters in response to the request (paragraph 48, 63-64; where the compression algorithm and compression algorithm version from the compression metadata are used to decompress the data).
The combination of Bjorling, Kesiraju, Hwang, and Iyer decompressing the page to a physical address of the memory array based on the decompression parameters (Bjorling, paragraph 37; Iyer, paragraph 64; where the decompressed data is stored into the data cache before being sent to the requesting entity. In the combination with Bjorling, it is stored to the buffer, then the volatile cache memory before being sent to the host).
The reasoning for obviousness is the same as indicated above with respect to claim 5.
With respect to claim 13, Bjorling teaches of the limitations cited and described above with respect to claim 7 for the same reasoning as recited with respect to claim 7.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments with respect to independent claims 1, 8, and 21 have been considered but are moot because of the new reference(s) being applied, in light of the amendment, to the particular limitations the arguments are referencing. Thereby the arguments no longer apply to the rejection.
Applicant's arguments filed 8/26/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argues with respect to independent claims 1, 8, and 21, that the combination of Bjorling and Kesiraju does not teach of “determining a storage address in the memory array for storing the compressed page” as because the target address is known to the host. The examiner disagrees with this reasoning.
As recited by the claims, the claim merely requires the “determining” of “a storage address in the memory array for storing the compressed page in association with the request.” The claim does not establish any restrictions on how this determining is carried out. Thus, a controller receiving the address as a part of the command, and using it as a location to store a compressed page based on the command, reads on the claims.
Thus, in Bjorling is accomplished in figures 1, 8 and paragraph 6, 38, 68-70 when the controller maintains the pointers for each zone indicating the location the compressed data is to be written within the zone, i.e. the address where the compressed data is to be written.
Furthermore, this is also disclosed in Kesiraju in figures 3 and 10 and in corresponding column 6, lines 25-53, and column 12, lines 12-51, where the wkdmc command supplies the address where the compressed page is to be stored upon completion of the compression operation and the compressed data is then stored at that address in the memory after it has been compressed. Thus the combination of Bjorling, Kesiraju, and Hwang reads on the limitations at issue.
The examiner recommends the applicant further detail how the compression controller carries out the claimed determining in order to distinguish the present application over the prior art.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Geiger et al. (US 2003/0061457) discloses compression/decompression commands that include a source address and destination address, where in response to receiving the command, the DME reads the first data from the memory, compresses the data and writes the compressed data to the indicated address in the system memory.
Dye et al. (US 6,523,102) discloses compressing data in memory using parallel compression and decompression engines.
Schauer et al. (US 2019/0265914) discloses a host processor that issues compression and decompression commands to a block I/O device, where in response, the data is retrieved from the memory at the provided address, the controller compresses the data using a compression algorithm and the compressed data is stored in the output buffer at the provided address and later stored into the mass storage for retrieval by the host at a later time.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MICHAEL C KROFCHECK whose telephone number is (571)272-8193. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday - Friday 8am -5pm, first Friday off.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Tim Vo can be reached on (571) 272-3642. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
MICHAEL C. KROFCHECK
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2138
/Michael Krofcheck/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2138
Prosecution Insights