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 .
1. Claims 1-17 are present 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 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.
2. Claims 1-4, 6-7 & 13-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being by anticipated by Kim (US 2019/0087127).
Claim 1, 7 & 13 -15, Kim (Fig. 2) shows a cell array (or banks 1 to N), and Fig. 3 shows a control logic 110 for handing both target refreshing and hammer refreshing functions using the refresh command (REF) and the target refresh addresses (RADD) for refreshing a target row. Additionally, para [0053] stated the target refresh address (for a selected row) is also based on a quantity (or count) of active command operations and an error history (or number of error corrections for each row).
Claim 2-4, 6, 16, Fig.4 shows an “error storage unit 440” as an error log for storing an error history including information collected (from the error counter 430), see [0067-0068], during an error check operation of the memory. Additionally, the “address selection unit 410” acts as the claimed ”access count region” for storing the quantity of the active operations (or #commands ACT) as claimed. See [0053-0058] below:
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302
1010
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314
904
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Claims 13-15, the precharging operation of any row is briefly mentioned in para [0006] as well-known to a skilled person in this art.
3. Claims 1-4, 6-10 & 12-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being by anticipated by Pan (US 2022/0165347).
Claim 1, 7 & 13 -15, Pan (Fig. 1-3) shows a cell array (or banks 1 to 15), and a control logic (i.e., 102, 104, 106, 108, & 112-116) for handing both target refreshing and hammer refreshing functions using the refresh command (REF) and the target refresh addresses (RADD) for refreshing a target row. Additionally, Fig. 1 shows that each bank has both a normal cell region (NL1 to BL4 columns) and an “access count cell region”, or column BLN, for storing the quantity of active operations for each row.
Claims 8-10, Fig. 1 also shows that the access count region for storing normal cells have same row quantity (WL1-WLm) with the access count region (126) for storing error history, but the normal cell region has more columns (= 4 columns or BL1-BL4) than the error history region (= 1 column or BLN).
Claim 2-4, 6, 16, para [0017-000020] further stated that “the access count value memory cells may further store error correction code (ECC) information”, thus inherently suggest to a skilled person in this art that these extra count cells could also be configured to store the error history for each access row too. See [0017-0020] below.
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308
978
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Claims 13-15, the precharging operation of any row is briefly mentioned in para [0006] as well-known to a skilled person in this art. See [0028-0031] below:
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550
908
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4. Claims 1-2, 7 & 15-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being by anticipated by KIM et al (US 2022/0246201).
Claim 1-2, 7 & 13-16, Kim (Fig. 7) shows a cell array (or banks 110), and a control logic (i.e., 120-150) for handing both target refreshing and hammer refreshing functions using the refresh command (CMD) and the target refresh addresses (REF-ADDR) for refreshing a target row. Additionally, para [0091] stated that the “status register 220” is used to store the “number of activation commands”, and that para [0092] further mentions that the “number of error corrections” is stored as “error-corrected codewords” in the method step (S23) in Fig. 9-10, thus inherently suggests to a skilled person both the claimed stage means for storing the “a quantity of active operations” (of claim 3) and the “error history” (of claim 4) as well. See [0091-0092] below:
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438
1072
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Allowable Subject Matter
5. Claims 5, 7 & 11 are objected as being dependent upon their parent/rejected claims above, but they tentatively contain other novel limitations, (i.e., anticivilization periods of the error history region), to the recited structure above, which are not clearly suggested by the prior arts nor seen elsewhere at this time.
6. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to VIET Q NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571)272-1788. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7:30-3PM EST.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Amir Zarabian can be reached at 571-272-1852. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/VIET Q NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2827
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