DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Objections
2. Claim 14 is objected to because of the following informalities:
A series of singular dependent claims is permissible in which a dependent claim refers to a preceding claim which, in turn, refers to another preceding claim.
A claim which depends from a dependent claim should not be separated by any claim which does not also depend from said dependent claim. It should be kept in mind that a dependent claim may refer to any preceding independent claim. In general, applicant's sequence will not be changed. See MPEP § 608.01(n).
Appropriate correction is required and will be handled by the Examiner at time of allowability.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
3. 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.
4. Claims 1, 4, 9, 13, and 16 – 22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Breakstone et al. (US Publication Number 2017/0220505, hereinafter “Breakstone”) in view of Kumar et al. (US Publication Number 2021/0216388, hereinafter “Kumar”).
5. As per claim 1, Breakstone teaches an add in card, comprising an add in card body (110, figure 2), and a first connector (660, figure 6, paragraph 42) and a second connector (640, figure 6, paragraph 42, and U.2 seen in figures 1 - 5) which are arranged on the add in card body (figures 2 and 6), wherein the first PCIe connector is configured to connect to a computer (connected to host, paragraphs 26, 39, and 42), and the second connector is configured to connect to a hard disk (hard disk connectivity, paragraph 45); a control bus transmission end of the first connector is connected with a control bus transmission end of the second connector (sideband link 649, figure 6), the control bus transmission end of the first connector and the control bus transmission end of the second connector are configured to transmit device control information between the computer and the hard disk (PCIe switch coupled between host and storage device and routing control information via SMBus/I2C sideband signals, paragraph 44, 52, and 60); a data bus transmission end (via 641, figure 6) of the first connector is connected with a data bus transmission end of the second connector, the data bus transmission end of the first PCIe connector and the data bus transmission end of the second connector are configured to transmit written data or read data between the computer and the hard disk (PCIe switch routes NVMe read/write storage data issued by the host over the PCIe interface to and from storage devices, figure 6, paragraphs 40, 44, and 60); and a serial port communication end of the first connector is connected with a serial port communication end of the second connector (paragraph 52, SMBus/I2C serial communication), the serial port communication end of the first connector and the serial port communication end of the second connector are configured to transmit serial port communication information (paragraphs 45, 49, 51, 52, and 68, serial links transmitting data between storage device and host PCIe connector).
Breakstone does not appear to explicitly disclose , wherein the serial port communication information is configured to perform a fault analysis on the hard disk or the computer.
However, Kumar discloses, wherein the serial port communication information is configured to perform a fault analysis on the hard disk or the computer (paragraphs 18, 19 and 21).
Breakstone and Kumar are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor PCIe communication handling.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, having the teachings of Breakstone and Kumar before him or her, to modify the PCIe failure handling (paragraphs 103 and 104) of Breakstone to include the fault analysis of Kumar because it would enhance data integrity.
One of ordinary skill would be motivated to make such modification in order to enhance efficiency in a high speed PCIe system (paragraph 2). Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Kumar with Breakstone to obtain the invention as specified in the instant claims.
6. Breakstone modified by the teachings of Kumar as seen in claim 1 above, as per claim 16, Breakstone teaches a motherboard, comprising the add in card according to claim 1,a PCIe slot (PCIe slot, paragraph 118), and a solid state drive (SSD 1040, paragraph 118); wherein the PCIe slot is arranged on the motherboard (motherboard, paragraph 118); the add in card is arranged in the PCIe slot in a pluggable manner (pluggable functionality, paragraph 114); and the solid state drive is arranged on the add in card in a pluggable manner (SSD in a pluggable configuration, paragraph 114, figure 10).
7. Breakstone modified by the teachings of Kumar as seen in claim 1 above, as per claim 17, Breakstone teaches a computer, comprising a case and the motherboard according to claim 16, wherein the motherboard is arranged in the case (chassis seen in figure 1).
8. Breakstone modified by the teachings of Kumar as seen in claim 1 above, as per claim 18, Breakstone teaches a method of transmitting data, applied to the computer according to claim 17, comprising: receiving a data writing instruction and written data (write operations, paragraph 46); generating a writing control signal based on the data writing instruction; sending the writing control signal to a solid state drive based on an add in card; receiving writing state feedback information sent by the solid state drive (paragraph 59) based on the writing control signal (write transaction management, paragraph 54); and sending the written data to the solid state drive based on the add in card (responsive mechanism for handling write transactions, paragraph 54).
9. Breakstone modified by the teachings of Kumar as seen in claim 1 above, as per claim 21, Breakstone teaches an electronic device, comprising a memory (752/753, figure 7), a processor (721, figure 7), and a computer program stored on the memory and running on the processor (software modules 754-756, figure 7), wherein the program, when executed by the processor, implements the method of transmitting data according to claim 1 (paragraph 66).
10. Breakstone modified by the teachings of Kumar as seen in claim 1 above, as per claim 22, Breakstone teaches a non-volatile readable storage medium (NVMe, paragraph 45), having a computer program stored therein, wherein the computer program (software modules 754-756, figure 7), when executed by a processor, implements the method of transmitting data according to claim 1 (paragraph 66).
11. Breakstone modified by the teachings of Kumar as seen in claim 1 above, as per claim 4, Breakstone teaches a card, wherein a driving power supply (623/621, figure 6) output end of the first connector is connected with a driving power supply input end of the second connector, the driving power supply output end of the first connector and the driving power supply input end of the second connector are configured to provide a driving power supply for the hard disk (power flow over the links via control module, paragraphs 59 – 62).
12. Breakstone modified by the teachings of Kumar as seen in claim 1 above, as per claim 9, Breakstone teaches a card, wherein the add in card body is provided with a function configuration module; and the function configuration module is connected with a hard disk control end of the second, and the function configuration module is configured to configure hardware functions of the hard disk (paragraphs 87 – 89, function configuration for the hard disk control).
13. Breakstone modified by the teachings of Kumar as seen in claim 1 above, as per claim 13, Breakstone teaches a card, wherein the add in card body is provided with a serial port debug module; and a signal transmission end of the serial port debug module (debug signals utilized to determine failure, paragraph 31) is connected with the serial port communication end of the first connector, the serial port debug module is configured to export the serial port communication information and debug the computer or the hard disk (paragraphs 103 and 104 determination of failure and associated debugging).
14. Breakstone modified by the teachings of Kumar as seen in claim 1 above, as per claim 19, Breakstone teaches a method, further comprising: receiving a data reading instruction and a data storage address (read handling paragraph 46); generating a reading control signal based on the data reading instruction (generating read control signal, paragraphs 50 – 52); sending the reading control signal to the solid state drive based on the add in card (sent to SSD, paragraph 53); receiving reading state feedback information sent by the solid state drive based on the reading control signal (paragraph 54, handling of the read alone with feedback); sending the data storage address to the solid state drive based on the add in card; and receiving reading data sent by the solid state drive (sending data address to SSD and receiving read data, paragraphs 54 and 55).
15. Breakstone modified by the teachings of Kumar as seen in claim 1 above, as per claim 20, Kumar teaches a method, further comprising: acquiring an exception log sent by a serial port debug module of the add in card (reporting mechanism for logging debug information, paragraph 9); parsing the exception log to determine read-write fault information of the add in card (endpoint failure reporting module 30, figure 3); determining a fault repair program based on the read-write fault information (paragraph 18, fault repair handling); and sending the fault repair program to the serial port debug module to debug the solid state drive or the computer connected to the add in card (software handling of failure recovery, paragraph 19).
Allowable Subject Matter
16. Claim 23 allowed.
Claims 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, and 14 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.
Conclusion
17. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. McNutt/Lam/Colenbrander/Mundt/McKnight/Espeseth has teachings directed to card interfacing between PCIe and SSD configurations with fault handling.
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AH
/HENRY TSAI/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2184
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