ASYNCHRONOUS DISTRIBUTED DATA FLOW FOR MACHINE LEARNING WORKLOADS

Application No. 18/814,371

• Filed: Aug 23, 2024
• Priority: May 07, 2021 — provisional 63/186,031
  • May 06, 2022 — continuation of 11/556,381
  • Dec 15, 2022 — continuation of 12/112,198
• Examiner: TSENG, CHENG YUAN
• Assignee: Google LLC
• OA Round: 1 (Non-Final)

Office Action

DETAILED ACTION
Double Patenting
The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s).
Claims 2 and 13 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-18 of U.S. Patent No. 11,556,381. Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the claimed invention simply is a broader scope from ‘381 patent.
Claims 2 and 13 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-18 of U.S. Patent No. 12,112,198. Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the claimed invention simply is a broader scope from ‘198 patent.

Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-21 are allowed.

The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
The claim limitation of “receiving data representing a machine learning workload to be executed on a plurality of hardware devices; obtaining data partitioning … into a plurality of accelerator islands … scheduling the respective portion of the machine learning workload across the plurality of hardware accelerators included in the accelerator island … using parallel asynchronous dispatch” as required in independent claims 2 and 14. None of the prior art on record discloses the same accelerator islands and scheduling.

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 .

Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to examiner Cheng-Yuan Tseng whose telephone number is [phone], and fax number is [phone]. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday through Friday from 09:00 to 17:30 Eastern Time. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Alicia Harrington can be reached on [phone]. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is [phone]. Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at [phone] (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative or access to the automated information system, call [phone] (IN USA OR CANADA) or [phone].

/CHENG YUAN TSENG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2615

Prosecution Timeline

• Aug 23, 2024: Application Filed
• Jun 08, 2026: Non-Final Rejection mailed — §DOUBLEPATENT (current)