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 1-20 are currently pending for examination.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1, 7-8, and 14-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Walsh (US 12147823 B1).
As per claim 1, Walsh discloses:
A system comprising: a processing device; and a memory device including instructions that are executable by the processing device for causing the processing device to perform operations comprising: determining, based on a software inventory, that a software application is associated with a functional safety standard, (“Computer system 700 includes a processor 704 and a memory 708 that communicate with each other, and with other components, via a bus 712.”, col.49, lines 32-34 ; "A “compliance matrix,” for the purpose of this disclosure, is a data structure that map out requirements from one or more sets of pre-defined safety standards 152 sourced form trusted repository 154 or specifications to the elements or components of, for example, integrated software module 128, second partition 108a, or any other system or process that must meet those requirements. In some cases, compliance matrix may include a tabular data format, wherein a table having one axis lists requirements from safety standards and another axis listed software module's 128 features, components, and/or runtime behaviors identified by at least a processor 104. In some cases, compliance matrix may be filled in to visualize how and where each requirement is addressed. In some cases, at least one axis of said compliance matrix may indicate a compliance status determined by at least a processor 104 as described above corresponding to other axis. In some cases, at least a processor 104 may link specific parts of software metadata e.g., source code, design documents, test cases to individual pre-defined safety standard. In these cases, compliance matrix may be used as a cross-reference tool. In an embodiment, for software module 128 that must comply with DO-178 standards, a compliance matrix may be configured to map each software requirement to specific runtime behaviors, unit tests, or even code segment", col.28-29, lines 49-15)
the software inventory comprising metadata corresponding to the software application; determining, based on the metadata of the software inventory, a set of system resources used to execute the software application; and subsequent to determining the set of system resources, scheduling an execution of the software application based on an availability of the set of system resources and the software application being associated with the functional safety standard. (“With continued reference to FIG. 1, in one or more embodiments, instantiating software image 120 into the at least one container 130 may include extracting software metadata 136 from software image 120, wherein the software metadata 120 may include a plurality of software configuration parameters 138 and a plurality of digital files 140. As used in this disclosure, “software metadata” is information related to software image 120. In a non-limiting example, software metadata may include a manifest file specifying software version number, required dependencies, configurations and/or the like. As described herein, “software configuration parameters” are parameters that dictate how software image 120 should be set up within a particular SOE.”, col.17, lines 3-16 ; “In some embodiments, instantiating the software image into the at least one container may include extracting software metadata from the software image, wherein the software metadata may include a plurality of software configuration parameters and a plurality of digital files, initializing the at least one container within the second partition as a function of the plurality of software configuration parameters, and deploying the plurality of digital files within the initialized at least one container by loading the at least one operational rule into the non-preemptable container runtime.”, col.47, lines 58-67 ; Examiner Note: the image equates to a software inventory)
As per claim 7, Walsh discloses:
the metadata of the software inventory indicates a minimum set of system resources to execute the software application. (“As used in this disclosure, “software metadata” is information related to software image 120. In a non-limiting example, software metadata may include a manifest file specifying software version number, required dependencies, configurations and/or the like. As described herein, “software configuration parameters” are parameters that dictate how software image 120 should be set up within a particular SOE.”, col.17, lines 3-16 ; “In one or more embodiments, each DAL certification may contain minimum resource requirements such as minimum processing power, minimum space allocation, and the like. In a non-limiting example, compliance 150 of software module 128 may be derived, at least in part, from determined DAL classification. In one or more embodiments, software data may contain DAL certification of at least one container 130.”, col.27, lines 17-27)
As per claim 8, it is a method claim comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 1, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 14, it is a method claim comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 7, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 15, it is a non-transitory computer-readable medium (see Walsh, [col.49, lines 1-3]: “As used herein, a machine-readable storage medium does not include transitory forms of signal transmission.”) claim comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 1, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
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.
Claims 2-4, 9-11, and 16-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Walsh (US 12147823 B1) in view of Childress (US 11824794 B1).
As per claim 2, Walsh fully discloses the limitations of claim 1, but does not explicitly disclose preventing execution of an application until a resource is available.
However, Childress discloses:
scheduling the execution of the software application comprises: determining that at least one system resource of the set of system resources is unavailable; and preventing the execution of the software application until the at least one system resource is available. ("In implementations, for any given contextual situation, if available bandwidth is insufficient to ensure the prevention of SLA breaches for each ongoing or scheduled application activity, the override rule-based model will initiate remediation protocols based on anticipated financial impacts due to one or more anticipated SLA breaches. For example, the override rules-based model may cause some application actions to be re-prioritized and rescheduled to avoid one or more potential breaches with the highest financial impact.", col.16, lines 31-40)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the teachings of Walsh with those of Childress in order to provide a method and system by which dynamic prioritization of software applications can be done during cloud migration, which considers SLA targets, available Internet bandwidth, and the impact of migrating different portions of data on business continuity (Childress, [col.3, lines 43-47]).
As per claim 3, Walsh in view of Childress fully discloses the limitations of claim 2.
Furthermore, Childress discloses:
operations further comprise: determining that the at least one system resource will be available at a predefined time; and in response to determining that the at least one system resource will be available at the predefined time, scheduling the execution of the software application to occur after the predefined time such that the set of system resources is available. ("In implementations, for any given contextual situation, if available bandwidth is insufficient to ensure the prevention of SLA breaches for each ongoing or scheduled application activity, the override rule-based model will initiate remediation protocols based on anticipated financial impacts due to one or more anticipated SLA breaches. For example, the override rules-based model may cause some application actions to be re-prioritized and rescheduled to avoid one or more potential breaches with the highest financial impact.", col.16, lines 31-40)
As per claim 4, Walsh fully discloses the limitations of claim 1, but does not discloses the scheduling of partial tasks.
However, Childress discloses:
scheduling the execution of the software application comprises: determining, based on the availability of the set of system resources, that a portion of the software application lacks sufficient system resources to be executed; and scheduling a partial execution of the software application such that a remaining portion of the software application is executed. ("In embodiments the server 404 is configured to identify whether one or more application activities can be parsed into multiple portions or steps. This enables the server 404 to schedule processing of application activity step (jobs) so that the applications can be made available to clients to meet SLA targets when available bandwidth is predicted to be too low to handle the processing of all application activities at the same time. In implementations, substep 508A includes dividing one or more application activities into multiple portions or steps, wherein the multiple portions or steps are prioritized individually and can be scheduled or rescheduled according to their individual priority level. In aspects of the invention, the server 404 utilizes stored predetermined rules indicating categories of application activities that can be divided into portions or steps, to determine ongoing or scheduled application activities that can be divided, according to their classification. This enables the processing of partial data so that multiple applications can be supported based on predicted available bandwidth and SLA targets of the applications.", col.16-17, lines 62-14)
As per claim 9, it is a method claim comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 2, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 10, it is a method claim comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 3, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 11, it is a method claim comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 4, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 16, it is a non-transitory computer-readable medium claim comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 7, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 17, it is a non-transitory computer-readable medium claim comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 1, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 18, it is a non-transitory computer-readable medium claim comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 7, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
Claims 5-6, 12, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Walsh (US 12147823 B1) in view of Larsson (US 20240330003 A1).
As per claim 5, Walsh fully discloses the limitations of claim 1, but does not disclose a second application which is not associated with a functional safety standard.
However, Larsson discloses:
determining, based on a second software inventory, that a second software application is unassociated with the functional safety standard; determining, based on the second software inventory, that a predicted resource consumption of the second software application conflicts with the set of system resources used to execute the first software application; and assigning a respective priority to the first software application and the second software application to prioritize executing the first software application. ("In another example, in response to determining that there is an insufficient amount of the computing resource 46-1 in order to execute the process 58-1 in the host environment 38, the first system and service manager 22-1 can cause the process 58-2 in the first restricted container environment 32-1 to be terminated. For example, the process 58-1 may be a critical or ASIL application that needs to run in the host environment 38 and the process 58-2 in the first restricted container environment 32-1 may be a less critical or QM level application. The computing device 10 may determine that there is not enough memory (e.g., computing resource 46-1) for the ASIL application to execute in the host environment 38, then the first system and service manager 22-1 can cause the QM level application in the first restricted container environment 32-1 to be terminated. The ASIL application may be an ASIL-D application that needs to execute without any interference and has priority of the computing resources due to the importance of the application for functional safety, so sharing computing resources or pausing a QM level application may not be enough to allow the ASIL-D application to execute properly. The computing device 10 can cause the first system and service manager 22-1 to terminate the QM level application in the first restricted container environment 32-1 so that the ASIL application can execute without interference.", 0050)
The system of Walsh in view of Larsson determines that the second application is not associated with the ASIL standard and that there is a conflict of resource usage through use of the software inventory, or image. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the teachings of Walsh with those of Larsson in order to improve the safety of an ECU or other processing unit through the termination of applications which are not safety critical when a process, such as an anti-lock braking application, require resources (Larsson, [0061]).
As per claim 6, Walsh in view of Larsson fully discloses the limitations of claim 5.
Furthermore, Larsson discloses:
assigning at least one system resource of the set of system resources to the first software application to prevent the second software application from accessing the at least one system resource. ("In another example, in response to determining that there is an insufficient amount of the computing resource 46-1 in order to execute the process 58-1 in the host environment 38, the first system and service manager 22-1 can cause the process 58-2 in the first restricted container environment 32-1 to be terminated. For example, the process 58-1 may be a critical or ASIL application that needs to run in the host environment 38 and the process 58-2 in the first restricted container environment 32-1 may be a less critical or QM level application. The computing device 10 may determine that there is not enough memory (e.g., computing resource 46-1) for the ASIL application to execute in the host environment 38, then the first system and service manager 22-1 can cause the QM level application in the first restricted container environment 32-1 to be terminated. The ASIL application may be an ASIL-D application that needs to execute without any interference and has priority of the computing resources due to the importance of the application for functional safety, so sharing computing resources or pausing a QM level application may not be enough to allow the ASIL-D application to execute properly. The computing device 10 can cause the first system and service manager 22-1 to terminate the QM level application in the first restricted container environment 32-1 so that the ASIL application can execute without interference.", 0050)
As per claim 12, it is a method claim comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 5, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
As per claim 19, it is a non-transitory computer-readable medium claim comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 5, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
Claims 13 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Walsh (US 12147823 B1) in view of Larsson (US 20240330003 A1) in further view of Frey (US 11310342 B1).
As per claim 13, Walsh in view of Larsson fully discloses the limitations of claim 12, but does not explicitly disclose a resource hold request.
However, Frey discloses:
receiving a resource hold request to reserve at least one system resource of the set of system resources to be used by the first software application; and in response to receiving the resource hold request, assigning the at least one system resource to the first software application to prevent the second software application from accessing the at least one system resource. (“Controller 100 may issue (at 510) a resource reservation request for some or all of the desired set of resources to each of the three nodes in second set of nodes 503. A controller agent for each node of second set of nodes 503 may receive (at 510) the resource reservation request from controller 100, and may attempt to allocate the requested resources for the particular application.”, col.16, lines 27-33)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to combine the teachings of Walsh in view of Larsson with those of Frey in order to improve the execution performance of particular applications, services, and/or software without a greater allocation of resources through an optimization criteria which may include determining the set of resources that execute the particular application, service, and/or software with the least latency, the least inter-node communication, and that match or are most similar to the resources enumerated within the resource definition (Frey, [col.4, lines 61-67]).
As per claim 20, it is a non-transitory computer-readable medium claim comprising substantially the same limitations as claim 13, and as such, it is rejected for substantially the same reasons.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Schuerman (US 20230358568 A1) – discloses a technique for the generating and provision of digital map data that is safe and reliable. The technique enables the verification of the digital map data in a map-client using a simple and efficient data structure to check the correctness of the map data before in-vehicle delivery to components that rely on this map data.
Iacaruso (US 20240329947 A1) – discloses systems and methods for implementing functional safety verification of a software compiler and a compiled software product including generating first code coverage data for a compiler (e.g., a toolchain testsuite code coverage report), the first code coverage data based on a plurality of validation tests of the compiler and performing compilation of a software product (e.g., application, library, operating system) with the compiler.
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/R.M.V./
Examiner, Art Unit 2196
/APRIL Y BLAIR/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2196
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