DETAILED ACTION
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 .
This is a Non-Final Office Action Correspondence in response to U.S. Application No. 18/855,075 filed on 10/08/2024.
Claims 21-40 are pending. Claims 21, 29 and 36 are independent claims.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement(s) (IDS) submitted on 10/08/2024 is/are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement(s) is/are being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefore, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 21-28 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter.
Claim 21 recites “At least one computer-readable storage medium”. It appears that the recited “computer-readable storage medium” is not limited to non-transitory type of media. Therefore, the recited “computer-readable storage medium” may be broadly interpreted to cover both forms of non-transitory tangible media as well as transitory media (e.g. signals per se) in view of the ordinary and customary meaning of computer-readable storage medium, particularly when the specification is silent as to the claimed medium. As such, claim 21 is drawn to a form of energy. Energy is not one of the four categories of invention; therefore, claim 21 is not statutory. Energy is not a series of steps or acts and thus is not a process. Energy is not a physical article or object and as such is not a machine or manufacture. Energy is not a combination of substances and therefore not a composition of matter. For this reason, claim 21 is non-statutory under 35 U.S.C. 101.
As to claims 22-28, the claims depend directly or indirectly upon claim 21 and thus inherit the deficiency of claim 21 and do not rectify the deficiency. Therefore, they are similarly rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101.
The rejection of claims 21-28 under 35 U.S.C. 101 for including both transitory and non-transitory embodiments may be overcome by adding the limitation “non-transitory” to the “computer-readable storage medium” in the claims.
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.
Claim(s) 21, 23-24, 28-29, 31-32, 36, and 38 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shukla et al. (U.S. PG Pub. No. 2022/0075638 A1, hereinafter “Shukla”) in view of Xu et al. (CN 108920254 A, hereinafter “Xu”).
Regarding claim 21, Shukla teaches at least one computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions for execution by at least one processor that, when executed, cause the at least one processor to:
implement operation of a plurality of virtual machines (VMs) in a cloud computing system (Shukla ¶0021);
monitor operation of the VMs in processing a set of active workloads, including monitoring of memory access latency for the VMs using a dynamic resource controller, the dynamic resource controller comprising hardware circuitry to monitor memory bandwidth usage (Shukla ¶¶0037-0038); and
upon detecting memory access in the cloud computing system reaching a setpoint (Shukla ¶0039):
implement memory access throttling of one or more of the set of active workloads for the plurality of VMs (Shukla ¶0039), and
allocate memory bandwidth to the active workloads according to a distribution algorithm (Shukla ¶¶0042-0043).
Shukla fails to explicitly teach the setpoint is a memory bandwidth setpoint. However, in the same field of endeavor, Xu teaches a memory bandwidth setpoint (Xu page 2, i.e., “for all the operating virtual machine, obtaining virtual machine by the hardware performance counter memory bandwidth by intercepting the access path of virtual input/output (I/O), obtaining the I/O access frequency of the virtual machine; setting a range [0, N] T1 represents memory bandwidth threshold value”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Shukla by incorporating the teachings of Xu. The motivation would be for relieving the memory expansion, reducing the memory allocation overhead and improves the memory erasure ratio, reducing as much as possible the loss of system performance (Xu Abstract).
As to claim 23, Shukla as modified by Xu also teaches the at least one computer-readable storage medium of claim 21, wherein the monitoring of the VMs in processing the set of active workloads is independent of characteristics of any workload within the set of active workloads (Shukla ¶0038, i.e., workloads are running on different VMs, which are independent from each other).
As to claim 24, Shukla as modified by Xu also teaches the at least one computer-readable storage medium of claim 21, further comprising instructions for execution by the at least one processor that, when executed, cause the at least one processor to:
establish a value of the memory bandwidth setpoint based on a request (Xu page 2, i.e., “for all the operating virtual machine, obtaining virtual machine by the hardware performance counter memory bandwidth by intercepting the access path of virtual input/output (I/O), obtaining the I/O access frequency of the virtual machine; setting a range [0, N] T1 represents memory bandwidth threshold value”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Shukla by incorporating the teachings of Xu. The motivation would be for relieving the memory expansion, reducing the memory allocation overhead and improves the memory erasure ratio, reducing as much as possible the loss of system performance (Xu Abstract).
As to claim 28, Shukla as modified by Xu also teaches the at least one computer-readable storage medium of claim 21, further comprising instructions for execution by the at least one processor that, when executed, cause the at least one processor to:
upon detection memory bandwidth that is no greater than the setpoint, allowing operation of the virtual machines without throttling of memory bandwidth (Shukla ¶0047).
Claim 29 recites the limitations substantially similar to those of claim 21 and is similarly rejected.
Claim 31 recites the limitations substantially similar to those of claim 23 and is similarly rejected.
Claim 32 recites the limitations substantially similar to those of claim 24 and is similarly rejected.
Regarding claim 36, Shukla as modified by Xu also teaches an apparatus comprising:
one or more processors including a plurality of processing cores, the one or more processors to support operation of a plurality of virtual machines (VMs) (Shukla ¶0021); and
a memory for storage of data, including data for processing of one or more workloads by the plurality of virtual machines (Shukla ¶0021);
wherein the one or more processors are to implement the same operations at recited in claim 21.
Claim 36 is similarly rejected.
Claim 38 recites the limitations substantially similar to those of claim 23 and is similarly rejected.
Claim(s) 22, 30, and 37 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shukla et al. (U.S. PG Pub. No. 2022/0075638 A1, hereinafter “Shukla”) in view of Xu et al. (CN 108920254 A, hereinafter “Xu”).
As to claim 22, Shukla as modified by Xu teaches the at least one computer-readable storage medium of claim 21, but fails to explicitly teach wherein the operation of the VMs includes providing service according to a service level agreement (SLA), the SLA including a maximum memory latency value. However, in the same field of endeavor, Guim teaches the operation of the VMs includes providing service according to a service level agreement (SLA), the SLA including a maximum memory latency value (Guim ¶0067). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Shukla and Xu by incorporating the teachings of Guim. The motivation would be for using a quality of service (QoS) to represent priority-based fairness in computer systems as allocations of dedicated pathways or slots in shared buffers, queues, etc. (Guim ¶0049).
Claims 30 and 37 recite the limitations that are substantially similar to those of claim 2 and are similarly rejected.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 25-27, 33-35, and 39-40 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
The features of claim limitations recited in claims 25-27, 33-35, and 39-40 in combination with the other limitations recited in the context of their respective base claim(s) is allowable subject matter.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. See Form PTO-892.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ALEXANDER KHONG whose telephone number is (571)270-7127. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 8am-5pm EST.
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/ALEXANDER KHONG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2168
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