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 .
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 therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter.
Claims 1-10, 14-26, and 51 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101.
As per claim 1, the claim recites a method, therefore is a process.
“ . . . identifying … translating … “These limitations, as drafted, are processes that, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, cover performance of the limitation in the mind but for the recitation of generic computer components. Thus, the claim recites a mental process.
The elements of “ … IPC platform …” are recited at a high-level of generality (i.e., as a generic processor performing a generic computer function) such that it amounts no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because it does not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claim is directed to the abstract idea.
As discussed above, “… IPC platform . . . ” are recited at a high-level of generality (i.e., as a generic processor performing a generic computer function) such that it amounts no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 2, see rejection on claim 1. “performing … ” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Leon. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 3, see rejection on claim 2. “terminating …” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Bose. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 4, see rejection on claim 1. “performing procedures …” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Leon. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 5, see rejection on claim 1. “the second process or tool is unaware of the first process or tool” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Leon. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 6, see rejection on claim 1. “first process or tool or (ii) the second process or tool are invoked by at least one software application … at least one software application is unaware that the at least one software application interfaces with the at least one of the first process or tool and the second process or tool” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Leon. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 7, see rejection on claim 1. “the first process or tool and the second process are of a different type” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Leon. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 8, see rejection on claim 1. “the first process or tool and the second process are the same type” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Leon. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 9, see rejection on claim 1. “the first process or tool implements less procedures than an entire IPC standard” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Leon. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 10, see rejection on claim 1. “wherein the first process or tool is configured to at least one of (i) supplement a functionality of the second process or tool, (ii) track, record, analyze, report, route, or optimize IPC calls on-the-fly, or (iii) substitute a functionality, in part or in totality, of the second process or tool with that of an optimized second process or tool based on runtime conditions, (iv) overlay, in part, a functionality of the second process or tool with that of a third process or tool in order to optimize or alter interactions between a software application and the second process or tools” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Leon. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 14, see rejection on claim 1. “a compute node resource including at least one of a processor, controllers, or accelerators to improve performance or stability” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Curtis. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 15, see rejection on claim 14. “ communication pattern optimization mechanism is based on a software module running within the first process or tool” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Curtis. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 16, see rejection on claim 1. “aggregating messages from the first process or tool and the second process or tool when the messages have a common route” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Leon. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 17, see rejection on claim 1. “after completion or use of the first process or tool by a software application, the first process or tool is available for use by another software application” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Leon. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 18, see rejection on claim 17. “wherein the first process or tool is configured to be used concurrently by multiple applications” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Leon. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 19, see rejection on claim 1. “initializing at least one of the first process or tool or the first process or tool” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Leon. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 20, see rejection on claim 1. identifying the at least one first IPC translation context based on a destination IPC context, wherein the at least one first IPC translation context is based on at least one of a process identifier, a node identifier, a node configuration, a network identifier, a network topology, user supplied preferences, or performance statistics” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Leon. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 21, see rejection on claim 1. “the at least one call is a point-to-point application programming interface ("API") call when the first process or tool is not directly connected to the second process or tool, and the point-to-point API call between the two processes is achieved through a series of forwarding point-to-point calls between intermediate processes” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Khan. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 22, see rejection on claim 21. “wherein the at least one call is a collective API call when the first process or tool uses a combination of second processes or tools performing forwarding collective or the point-to-point API calls to reach all software application processes involved in the collective call” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Khan. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 23, see rejection on claim 21. “wherein the at least one call is a collective API call when the first process or tool is using a sequence of second processes or tools to optimize performance” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Khan. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 24, see rejection on claim 23. “wherein the at least one call is a collective API call when the first process or tool is using a sequence of second processes or tools to optimize performance” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Mamidala. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 25, see rejection on claim 1. “performing an asynchronous communication operation by substituting blocking wait calls with non-blocking test calls” is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception - see MPEP 2106.05(d) and Berkheimer Memo. See Pope. The claim is ineligible.
As per claim 26, see rejection on claim 1.
As per claim 51, see rejection on claim 1.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 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 person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-2, 4-10,16-20, 26, and 51 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Leon et al (León, Edgar A., et al. "On-the-fly, robust translation of mpi libraries." 2021 IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing (CLUSTER). IEEE, 2021) (hereinafter Leon).
As per claim 1, Leon teaches:
A method for facilitating inter-process communication ("IPC") of a plurality of IPC processes or tools, comprising:
a) using an IPC platform, intercepting at least one call from a first process or tool of the IPC processes (Leon, III. WI4MPI: A GENERAL APPROACH TO ABI TRANSLATION—an intercepting step exists in order to translate) or tools intended to be provided to a second process or tool of the IPC processes or tools;
b) identifying at least one first IPC translation context of the IPC processes or tools based on the first process or tool (Leon, III. WI4MPI: A GENERAL APPROACH TO ABI TRANSLATION—under BRI, first IPC translation context can be input (in) and input/output (inout) arguments from the β ABI + Wi4MPI ); and
c) translating the at least one first IPC translation context to at least one second IPC translation context usable by the second process or tool (Leon, III. WI4MPI: A GENERAL APPROACH TO ABI TRANSLATION—under BRI, translating can be Translate input (in) and input/output (inout) arguments from the β ABI to the ρ ABI).
As per claim 2, Leon teaches:
The method of claim 1 (see rejection on claim 1), further comprising performing the procedures (a)-(c) in a recursive manner (Leon, , III. WI4MPI: A GENERAL APPROACH TO ABI TRANSLATION—under BRI, recursive can have only one pass).
As per claim 4, Leon teaches:
The method of claim 1 (see rejection on claim 1), further comprising performing procedures (a)-(c) to preserve application compatibility through technological evolution of communication software tools and communication hardware interconnects (Leon, 1 Introduction—under BRI, technological evolution of communication software tools can be evolution to a different library).
As per claim 5, Leon teaches:
The method of claim 1 (see rejection on claim 1), wherein the second process or tool is unaware of the first process or tool (Leon, 1 Introduction).
As per claim 6, Leon teaches:
The method of claim 1 (see rejection on claim 1), wherein:
at least one of (i) the first process or tool or (ii) the second process or tool are invoked by at least one software application, and
the at least one software application is unaware that the at least one software application interfaces with the at least one of the first process or tool and the second process or tool (Leon, 1 Introduction).
As per claim 7, Leon teaches:
The method of claim 1 (see rejection on claim 1), wherein the first process or tool and the second process are of a different type (Leon, 1 Introduction).
As per claim 8, Leon teaches:
The method of claim 1 (see rejection on claim 1), wherein the first process or tool and the second process are the same type ( Leon, 1 Introduction—under BRI, a type can be a type [both] using ABI ).
As per claim 9, Leon teaches:
The method of claim 1(see rejection on claim 1), wherein the first process or tool implements less procedures than an entire IPC standard ( Leon, 1 Introduction).
As per claim 10, Leon teaches:
The method of claim 1 (see rejection on claim 1), wherein the first process or tool is configured to at least one of (i) supplement a functionality of the second process or tool (Leon, 1 Introduction—under BRI supplementing can be adding a functionality of the second process or tool), (ii) track, record, analyze, report, route, or optimize IPC calls on-the-fly, or (iii) substitute a functionality, in part or in totality, of the second process or tool with that of an optimized second process or tool based on runtime conditions, (iv) overlay, in part, a functionality of the second process or tool with that of a third process or tool in order to optimize or alter interactions between a software application and the second process or tools.
As per claim 16, Leon teaches:
The method of claim 1 (see rejection on claim 1), further comprising aggregating messages from the first process or tool and the second process or tool when the messages have a common route (NOT REQUIRED: The broadest reasonable interpretation of a method (or process) claim having contingent limitations requires only those steps that must be performed and does not include steps that are not required to be performed because the condition(s) precedent are not me).
As per claim 17, Leon teaches:
The method of claim 1 (see rejection on claim 1), wherein after completion or use of the first process or tool by a software application, the first process or tool is available for use by another software application (Leon, I Introduction, III. WI4MPI: A GENERAL APPROACH TO ABI TRANSLATION).
As per claim 18, Leon teaches:
The method of claim 17 (see rejection on claim 17), wherein the first process or tool is configured to be used concurrently by multiple applications (Leon, III. WI4MPI: A GENERAL APPROACH TO ABI TRANSLATION—under BRI, used concurrently can be used together in a single system).
As per claim 19, Leon teaches:
The method of claim 1 (see rejection on claim 1), further comprising initializing at least one of the first process or tool or the first process or tool (Leon, III. WI4MPI: A GENERAL APPROACH TO ABI TRANSLATION—an initializing step exists in order to use the tools).
As per claim 20, Leon teaches:
The method of claim 1 (see rejection on claim 1), further comprising identifying the at least one first IPC translation context based on a destination IPC context (Leon, III. WI4MPI: A GENERAL APPROACH TO ABI TRANSLATION), wherein the at least one first IPC translation context is based on at least one of a process identifier (Leon, III. WI4MPI: A GENERAL APPROACH TO ABI TRANSLATION—under BRI, a process ID can be Wi4MPI), a node identifier, a node configuration, a network identifier, a network topology, user supplied preferences, or performance statistics.
As per claim 26, see rejection on claim 1.
As per claim 51, see rejection on claim 1.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Leon in view of Bose et al (US 2023/0229461) (hereinafter Bose).
As per claim 3, Leon teaches:
The method of claim 2 (see rejection on claim 2).
Leon does not expressly teach:
further comprising terminating at least one of the first process or tool or the second process or toll when at least one of the IPC processes terminates.
However, Bose discloses:
further comprising terminating at least one of the first process (Bose, [0137]) or tool or the second process or toll when at least one of the IPC processes terminates.
Both Bose and Leon pertain to the art of IPC.
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use Bose’s method to terminate process because it allows programs to close files, free memory, and notify other connected processes safely.
Claims 14-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Leon in view of Curtis et al (US 2023/0145253) (hereinafter Curtis).
As per claim 14, Leon teaches:
The method of claim 1 (see rejection on claim 1).
Leon does not expressly teach:
wherein the first process or tool, by its ability to at least one of track, collect, or analyze IPC calls, is configured to interact with at least one of:
a computer node operating system to change at least one of a priority, a process placement policy, an NUMA memory allocation or a migration of a running application process, the second process or tool to set runtime parameters as a buffer allocation, a threshold between IPC component selection, or a channel selection,
a compute node resource including at least one of a processor, controllers, or accelerators to improve performance or stability,
a compute node processor to optimize at least one of a cache memory allocation or a bandwidth based on recorded information, a network controller to provide the network controller with information on at least one of a current network traffic or an expected network traffic to optimize the runtime parameters as message routing or message priority, or
a communication pattern optimization mechanism that, based on at least one of a recent message tracking or a message analysis, at least one of reorders messages, aggregates messages, or substitutes application programming interface ("API") calls.
However, Curtis discloses:
wherein the first process or tool, by its ability to at least one of track, collect, or analyze IPC calls, is configured to interact with at least one of:
a computer node operating system to change at least one of a priority, a process placement policy, an NUMA memory allocation or a migration of a running application process, the second process or tool to set runtime parameters as a buffer allocation, a threshold between IPC component selection, or a channel selection,
a compute node resource including at least one of a processor, controllers, or accelerators to improve performance or stability (Curtis, [0001],
a compute node processor to optimize at least one of a cache memory allocation or a bandwidth based on recorded information, a network controller to provide the network controller with information on at least one of a current network traffic or an expected network traffic to optimize the runtime parameters as message routing or message priority, or
a communication pattern optimization mechanism that, based on at least one of a recent message tracking or a message analysis, at least one of reorders messages, aggregates messages, or substitutes application programming interface ("API") calls.
Both Curtis and Leon pertain to the art of HPC.
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use Curtis’ method to use an accelerator to achieve high performance because it is well-known in the art that Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) are adept by design to efficiently execute thousands of processes (computational tasks or kernels) in parallel.
As per claim 15, Leon/Curtis teaches:
The method of claim 14 (see rejection on claim 14), wherein the communication pattern optimization mechanism is based on a software module running within the first process or tool (Leon, III. WI4MPI: A GENERAL APPROACH TO ABI TRANSLATION), an artificial intelligence ("Al") module running on a GPU, or any other software-based mechanism or hardware-based mechanism that given a set of parametrized data provides an optimized schedule of operation.
Claims 21-23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Leon in view of Khan et al (US 2021/0373860) (hereinafter Khan).
As per claim 21, Leon teaches:
The method of claim 1 (see rejection on claim 1).
Leon does not expressly teach:
wherein:
the at least one call is a point-to-point application programming interface ("API") call when the first process or tool is not directly connected to the second process or tool, and the point-to-point API call between the two processes is achieved through a series of forwarding point-to-point calls between intermediate processes.
However, Khan discloses:
wherein:
the at least one call is a point-to-point application programming interface ("API") call when the first process or tool is not directly connected to the second process or tool, and the point-to-point API call between the two processes is achieved through a series of forwarding point-to-point calls between intermediate processes (Khan, [0386]).
Both Khan and Leon pertain to the art of API calls.
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use Khan’s method to use a series of forwarding point-to-point calls between intermediate processes because forwarding point-to-point calls between intermediate processes in Inter-Process Communication (IPC) decouples senders from ultimate receivers. This architecture provides core benefits including enhanced security filtering, dynamic message routing, load balancing, and transparent proxying without requiring direct connections between edge applications.
As per claim 22, Leon/Khan teaches:
The method of claim 21 (see rejection on claim 21), wherein the at least one call is a collective API call when the first process or tool uses a combination of second processes or tools performing forwarding collective or the point-to-point API calls to reach all software application processes involved in the collective call (NOT REQUIRED: The broadest reasonable interpretation of a method (or process) claim having contingent limitations requires only those steps that must be performed and does not include steps that are not required to be performed because the condition(s) precedent are not me).
As per claim 23, Leon/Khan teaches:
The method of claim 21 (See rejection on claim 21), wherein the at least one call is a collective API call when the first process or tool is using a sequence of second processes or tools to optimize performance(NOT REQUIRED: The broadest reasonable interpretation of a method (or process) claim having contingent limitations requires only those steps that must be performed and does not include steps that are not required to be performed because the condition(s) precedent are not me).
Claim 24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Leon/Khan as applied to claim 23 above, and further in view of Mamidala et al (Mamidala, Amith R., et al. "MPI collectives on modern multicore clusters: Performance optimizations and communication characteristics." 2008 Eighth IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGRID). IEEE, 2008) (hereinafter Mamidala).
As per claim 24, Leon/Khan teaches:
The method of claim 23 (See rejection on claim 23).
Leon/Khan does not expressly teach:
wherein the second process or tool is optimized for intra- node collective function, and thereafter, the second process or tool optimized for inter-node collective function.
However, Mamidala discloses:
wherein the second process or tool is optimized for intra- node collective function (Mamidala, 4.1 Optimized MPI Bcast MPI-Allgather), and thereafter, the second process or tool optimized for inter-node collective function (Mamidala, 3 Communication in Multicores—under BRI, optimized can be provisioned to handle).
Both Mamidala and Leon/Khan pertain to the art of IPC.
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use Mamidala’s method to use inter and intra node functions because intra-node and inter-node collective functions synchronize data across processing units (like GPUs or CPUs). Intra-node operations run inside a single server using ultra-fast paths (like NVLink) for low latency. Inter-node operations span multiple servers over a network (like Ethernet or InfiniBand) to scale workloads globally.
Claim 25 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Leon in view of Pope et al (US 2012/0254893) (hereinafter Pope).
As per claim 25, Leon teaches:
The method of claim 1 (see rejection on claim 1).
Leon does not expressly teach:
further comprising performing an asynchronous communication operation by substituting blocking wait calls with non-blocking test calls.
However, Pope discloses:
further comprising performing an asynchronous communication operation by substituting blocking wait calls with non-blocking test calls (Pope,
[0056]).
Both Pope and Leon pertain to the art of IPC.
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use Pope’s method to replace blocking calls with non-blocking calls because replacing blocking calls with non-blocking calls in Inter-Process Communication (IPC) prevents a process from freezing while waiting to send or receive data. This improves system throughput, lowers latency, allows high concurrency on single or limited threads, and keeps user interfaces or real-time loops responsive.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. US 2023/0137661 teaches a method of using mutex calls.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CHARLIE SUN whose telephone number is (571)270-5100. The examiner can normally be reached 9AM-5PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Pierre Vital can be reached at (571) 272-4215. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/CHARLIE SUN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2198
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