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 .
Status of Claims:
Claims 2-11, 13, and 15-20 are pending in Instant Application.
Examiner notes claims 1, 12, 14, and 21-24 were cancelled and claims 4-7, 10-11, 13, and 17-20 were amended by preliminary amendment filed 01/13/2025.
Priority
Examiner acknowledges Applicant’s claim to priority benefits of International Application No. PCT/SE2022/050710 filed 07/13/2022.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement(s) (IDS) submitted on 01/13/2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement(s) is being considered if signed and initialed by the Examiner.
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 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.
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 of this title, 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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 2, 5-6, 8-10, 13, 15, and 18-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Coyle et al. (U.S. Publication No. 2021/0320881) [Applicant’s IDS] in view of Dubal et al. (U.S. Publication No. 8,346,999).
As per claim 2, Coyle teaches a method performed by a processing unit (12) for handling packets in a communication network (1) (Coyle: fig. 1 and paragraph 0009; One or more cores 120 may poll packet queues 108 of the NIC 104 to determine whether packets are ready to be transferred from the NIC 104 to the host computing system 102 and may direct transfer of available packets from the NIC 104 to the host computing system 102 (e.g., into memory 122) for processing), the method comprising
obtaining (501) an indication from a packet handling unit (10) comprising two or more receive, RX, queues (Coyle: paragraph 0009; NIC 104 receives packets on behalf of host computing system 102. NIC 104 includes an incoming packet buffer 106, packet queues 108, analytics engine 110, and flow steering table 112…paragraph 0022; NIC 102 comprises a low priority queue 114, a high priority queue 116, and additional queues 118 (e.g., where the additional queues 118 may include one or more queues having one or more intermediate priorities)…paragraph 0043; per-flow analytics information 312 generated by the analytics engine 310 may be communicated, e.g., over a management channel of the link 340, to the packet analytics agent 330 of the host computing system 102 to allow the packet analytics agent 330 to cause the host computing system 302 to adapt to the incoming packet flows, e.g., by changing a frequency of one or more of the cores 320 polling the packet queues 308),
selecting (502) at least one RX queue out of the two or more RX queues to poll one or more packets based on the obtained indication (Selecting based on the obtained indication will be taught later. Coyle: paragraph 0021; Each flow may be steered by the analytics engine 110 to a NIC packet queue 108 (e.g., low priority queue 114, high priority queue 116, or an additional queue 118) based on the per-flow analytics information…paragraph 0035; multiples cores 120 may each poll one or more respective packet queues of NIC 104. A core 120 that polls a packet queue may also be assigned to process the packets of that queue or a first core 120 may poll a queue on behalf of a second core 120 that eventually processes the packets of that queue after the packets have been transferred to the host computing system 102…paragraph 0036; When a core 120 polls a NIC packet queue 108, the core 120 may communicate with the NIC 102 to determine whether packets are available on the packet queue 108 for transfer to the host computing system 102 to be processed).
However Coyle does not explicitly mention wherein the indication indicates a status of a RX queue out of the two or more RX queues; and selecting based on the obtained indication.
However Dubal teaches:
wherein the indication indicates a status of a RX queue out of the two or more RX queues (Dubal: col. 5, lines 22-26; a queue status message 250 indicative of an exceeded high threshold in one or more queues, the message 250 of this embodiment may also include additional information regarding the capacity of other queues); and
selecting based on the obtained indication (Dubal: col. 5, lines 22-26; a queue status message 250 indicative of an exceeded high threshold in one or more queues, the message 250 of this embodiment may also include additional information regarding the capacity of other queues…col. 9, lines 38-45; an application load balancer, in response to the queue status message from the network adapter, may determine that an overloaded queue is a result of an overloaded core. Instead of migrating network applications away from that core, the application load balancer may instead identify non-network applications associated with the core and move one or more of these non-network applications to another core).
Therefore it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the queue status information taught by Dubal into Coyle’s queue selection mechanism to dynamically balance receive queue processing based on queue conditions, thereby reducing packet drops and packet flow inefficiencies while improving queue management and packet processing efficiency (Dubal: Abstract; col. 1, lines 6-7 and col. 2, lines 14-18).
As per claim 5, the modified Coyle teaches the method according claim 2, further comprising polling (503) the one or more packets from the selected at least one RX queue (Coyle: paragraph 0009; One or more cores 120 may poll packet queues 108 of the NIC 104 to determine whether packets are ready to be transferred from the NIC 104 to the host computing system 102 and may direct transfer of available packets from the NIC 104 to the host computing system 102 (e.g., into memory 122) for processing…paragraph 0021; Each flow may be steered by the analytics engine 110 to a NIC packet queue 108 (e.g., low priority queue 114, high priority queue 116, or an additional queue 118) based on the per-flow analytics information…paragraph 0036; When a core 120 polls a NIC packet queue 108, the core 120 may communicate with the NIC 102 to determine whether packets are available on the packet queue 108 for transfer to the host computing system 102 to be processed).
As per claim 6, the modified Coyle teaches the method according to claim 2, wherein the status indicated indicates availability of packets and/or relevance of packets and selecting the at least one RX queue is based on the availability of packets and/or relevance of packets (Coyle: paragraph 0009; One or more cores 120 may poll packet queues 108 of the NIC 104 to determine whether packets are ready to be transferred from the NIC 104 to the host computing system 102 and may direct transfer of available packets from the NIC 104 to the host computing system 102 (e.g., into memory 122) for processing…paragraph 0021; Each flow may be steered by the analytics engine 110 to a NIC packet queue 108 (e.g., low priority queue 114, high priority queue 116, or an additional queue 118) based on the per-flow analytics information…paragraph 0036; When a core 120 polls a NIC packet queue 108, the core 120 may communicate with the NIC 102 to determine whether packets are available on the packet queue 108 for transfer to the host computing system 102).
With respect to claim 8, it is substantially similar to claim 2 and is rejected in the same manner, the same art and reasoning applying.
The same motivation to combine as Claim 2 applies here.
Regarding claim 9, it is substantially similar to claim 6, and is rejected in the same manner, the same arts and reasoning applying.
Regarding claim 10, it is substantially similar to claim 5, and is rejected in the same manner, the same arts and reasoning applying.
As per claim 13, the modified Coyle teaches a computer-readable storage medium, having stored thereon a computer program product comprising instructions which, when executed on at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to carry out the methods according to claim 1 (Coyle: paragraph 0059; Memory device 607 may store any suitable data, such as data used by processor 608 to provide the functionality of computing system 600. For example, data associated with programs that are executed or files accessed by cores 614 may be stored in memory device 607. Thus, a memory device 607 may include a system memory that stores data and/or sequences of instructions that are executed or otherwise used by the cores 614…paragraph 0067; the data may be stored in any form of a machine readable medium).
With respect to Claim 15, it is substantially similar to Claim 2 and is rejected in the same manner, the same art and reasoning applying. Further, Coyle also teaches a processing unit (12) for handling packets in a communication network, wherein the processing unit (12) is configured to: (Coyle: paragraph 0013 and fig. 1; Although portions of this description focus on operations performed by cores (e.g., polling MC packet queues and processing packets) and adjusting characteristics of the cores (e.g., operating frequencies), various embodiments may apply to any suitable processor unit that may perform such operations or exhibit such characteristics, such as a central processing unit (CPU), processor core, graphics processing unit, hardware accelerator, field programmable gate array, neural network processing unit, artificial intelligence processing unit, inference engine, data processing unit, or infrastructure processing unit).
The same motivation to combine as Claim 2 applies here.
Regarding claims 18-19, they are substantially similar to claims 5-6, respectively, and are rejected in the same manner, the same arts and reasoning applying.
Claims 3-4, 11, and 16-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Coyle et al. (U.S. Publication No. 2021/0320881) [Applicant’s IDS], in view of Dubal et al. (U.S. Publication No. 8,346,999), and further in view of Nemirovsky et al. (U.S. Publication No. 2001/0052053) [Applicant’s IDS].
As per claim 3, the modified Coyle teaches the method according to claim 2.
However the modified Coyle does not explicitly mention probing the status of the two or more RX queues.
However Nemirovsky teaches:
wherein obtaining the indication comprises probing the status of the two or more RX queues (Nemirovsky: paragraph 0445; The item number indicates the type of the probe, a packet probe or a queue probe. This instruction obtains information from the PMU on the state of a given packet, or on a given queue…A queue probe returns the size of the given queue).
Therefore it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to utilize the teachings of Nemirovsky with the teachings of the modified Coyle because the most sought-after improvements in data packet networks are those that provide higher speed in routing (more packets per unit time) and better reliability and fidelity in messaging. What is generally needed are router apparatus and methods increasing the rates at which packets may be processed in a router (Nemirovsky: paragraph 0004).
As per claim 4, the modified Coyle teaches the method according to claim 2.
However the modified Coyle does not explicitly mention wherein obtaining the indication comprises configuring monitoring instruction or configuring probe register bits keeping track of the two or more RX queues associated with one or more processing units at the packet handling unit (10).
However Nemirovsky teaches:
wherein obtaining the indication comprises configuring monitoring instruction or configuring probe register bits keeping track of the two or more RX queues associated with one or more processing units at the packet handling unit (10) (Nemirovsky: paragraphs 0443-0444; Assembly Language Format: PKTPR rt, rs, item…paragraph 0445; A packet probe returns the current queue number, the destination queue number, the packet page number and the state of the following bits: complete, active, re-activate, allow activation. In the case that the activation control bit is set, the allow activation bit is set and the probe returns the previous value of the allow activation bit…paragraph 0462; A total of eight counters are provided which may be configured dynamically to count all of the events which are monitored).
Therefore it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to utilize the teachings of Nemirovsky with the teachings of the modified Coyle because the most sought-after improvements in data packet networks are those that provide higher speed in routing (more packets per unit time) and better reliability and fidelity in messaging. What is generally needed are router apparatus and methods increasing the rates at which packets may be processed in a router (Nemirovsky: paragraph 0004).
Regarding claim 11, it is substantially similar to claim 4, and is rejected in the same manner, the same arts and reasoning applying.
Regarding claims 16-17, they are substantially similar to claims 3-4, respectively, and are rejected in the same manner, the same arts and reasoning applying.
Claims 7 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Coyle et al. (U.S. Publication No. 2021/0320881) [Applicant’s IDS], in view of Dubal et al. (U.S. Publication No. 8,346,999), and further in view of Vasudevan et al. (U.S. Publication No. 2023/0300078).
As per claim 7, the modified Coyle teaches the method according to claim 2.
However the modified Coyle does not explicitly mention wherein selecting the at least one RX queue is further based on a preference of an application or user of the application.
However Vasudevan teaches:
wherein selecting the at least one RX queue is further based on a preference of an application or user of the application (Vasudevan: paragraph 0021; ALNQ addresses issues, such as that applications may desire to have their own “visible” queues and load balancing control using the operating system's networking stack…creating scalable application specific queues on NICs with socket layer visibility…claim 1; assigning, based upon respective application-specific quality of service-related data: one or more queues to respective applications; and/or respective portions of network traffic to the one or more queues; wherein: the respective application-specific quality of service-related data is associated with the respective applications; the one or more queues are for use in application-level steering of the respective portions of the network traffic; the respective application-specific quality of service-related data is configurable to be based upon respective application-associated identifier values…paragraph 0152; uniquely associating one or more ingress queues of a network interface card (NIC) with a server function to be serviced by the NIC).
Therefore it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to utilize the teachings of Vasudevan with the teachings of the modified Coyle because applications may desire to have their own “visible” queues and load balancing control using the operating system's networking stack while creating scalable application specific queues on NICs with socket layer visibility (Vasudevan: paragraph 0021).
Regarding claim 20, it is substantially similar to claim 7, and is rejected in the same manner, the same arts and reasoning applying.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KARINA J. GARCIA-CHING whose telephone number is (571)270-7159. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Wednesday (9:00 AM - 5:00 PM).
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Vivek Srivastava can be reached at (571) 272-7304. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/KARINA J GARCIA-CHING/Examiner, Art Unit 2449
/VIVEK SRIVASTAVA/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2449
Prosecution Insights