DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1 – 8 are pending.
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 .
Drawing
The drawing is objected because the drawings from figures 2 – 19 are missing. Thus, there is no correlation between specification and drawing.
Correction of the following is required
Notification of invoking - 35 USC § 112(f)
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(f):
(f) Element in Claim for a Combination. – An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
Claims 1 – 6 are invoking 112(f) interpretation for reciting limitations such as “accelerator”, “prediction unit”, “computing power setup recording unit”, determination unit”, “setting unit”, “processing continuation unit”, “circuit information recording unit”, has/have been interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, because it uses/they use a generic placeholder “accelerator” and “unit” coupled with functional language “that predicts, maintains, determines, applies, responses” without reciting sufficient structure to achieve the function. Furthermore, the generic placeholder is not preceded by a structural modifier.
Since the claim limitation(s) invokes 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, claim(s) 1-6 has/have been interpreted to cover the corresponding structure described in the specification that achieves the claimed function, and equivalents thereof.
A review of the specification shows that the following appears to be the corresponding structure described in the specification paragraphs 32-36 for the 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph limitation. Thus, the above invoking 112(f) terms “accelerator”, “prediction unit”, “computing power setup recording unit”, determination unit”, “setting unit”, “processing continuation unit”, “circuit information recording unit” will be interpreted according to the structure definition provided in paragraphs 27 and 32-36.
If applicant wishes to provide further explanation or dispute the examiner’s interpretation of the corresponding structure, applicant must identify the corresponding structure with reference to the specification by page and line number, and to the drawing, if any, by reference characters in response to this Office action.
If applicant does not intend to have the claim limitation(s) treated under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112 , sixth paragraph, applicant may amend the claim(s) so that it/they will clearly not invoke 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, or present a sufficient showing that the claim recites/recite sufficient structure, material, or acts for performing the claimed function to preclude application of 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph.
For more information, see MPEP § 2173 et seq. and Supplementary Examination Guidelines for Determining Compliance With 35 U.S.C. 112 and for Treatment of Related Issues in Patent Applications, 76 FR 7162, 7167 (Feb. 9, 2011).
Claim Objections
Claim 8 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 8 is an improper dependent claim. It needs to be rewritten in the independent form to include all the limitations in claim 6.
Appropriate action is required.
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 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, 4-5, 6, 8 are rejected under AIA 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Nagasundaram US 20230195485 A1
Regarding claim 1, Nagasundaram discloses an accelerator state control device to control states of an accelerator when specific processing of an application is offloaded to, and computed by, the accelerator, the device comprising:
a prediction unit that predicts amount of processing to be offloaded to the accelerator and outputs a prediction result as a traffic and a variation range of the traffic [abstract] [0060: the workload forecast may be used to reserve capacity of a VF of a group of one or more VFs assigned to a particular VM in anticipation of imminent receipt of a workload from the particular VM] [0032-0041] [0061-0064];
a computing power setup recording unit that maintains information on a type and a model of the accelerator and setup information tailored to performance as a list, and retrieves
information from the list in response to an inquiry and responds to the inquiry [0019] [0020: methodologies described herein are applicable to hardware accelerators (e.g., XPUs) more generally, including Video Processing Units (VPUs), Infrastructure Processing Units (IPUs), Application Processing Units (APUs), Data Processing Units (DPUs), Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), Network Interface Cards (NICs)] [0032-0041] [0060-0064];
a determination unit that determines setup information on computing power and varying time of the accelerator, based on the traffic and the variation range outputted from the prediction unit as well as the list retrieved from the computing power setup recording unit [0049: new workload forecast processing is performed. For example, responsive to receipt of a new workload forecast for workloads expected to be run by the VMs, DIRE may, among other things, perform dynamic power management to selectively power up or power down one or more accelerators or tiles (e.g., tile(s) 175a-m)][0095: receiving a forecast of new workloads for a future time period; and based on the forecast, the resource utilization, and a warm-up time of an accelerator of the plurality of accelerators] [0020] [0109] [0060-0064]; and
a setting unit that applies the setup information to the accelerator, based on the setup
information for the accelerator determined by the determination unit [0064: one or more power management state(s) may be set based on the accelerator(s) predicted to be idle or predicted that should be warmed-up based on the workload analytics performed at block 510. For example, the workload analytic engine may direct a resource power manager (e.g., resource power manager 257) to selectively set D0ix/S0ix states as appropriate for the accelerator(s) or tile(s) identified in block 510] [0032-0041] [0060-0063] [0109].
Regarding claim 2, Nagasundaram discloses the accelerator state control device according to claim 1, comprising: a processing continuation unit that temporarily continues processing by a central processing unit (CPU) or another accelerator when a computing function of the accelerator is temporarily stopped due to the setting unit setting the setup information [0032-0041] [0060-0064].
Regarding claim 4, Nagasundaram discloses the accelerator state control device according to claim 1, wherein the accelerator includes a field programmable gate array (FPGA) and a graphics processing unit (GPU), and the setting unit applies the setup information commonly to every type of the accelerator through changing a frequency and/or turning off an electric source, and applies the setup information through rewriting a circuit to the FPGA and through sleeping to the GPU [0032-0041] [0060-0064].
Regarding claim 5, this claim is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in claim 1 above.
Regarding claim 6, this claim is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in claim 1 above.
Regarding claim 8, this claim is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in claim 1 above.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3 and 7 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 following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
The prior arts of record do not disclose nor fairly suggest the limitations recited in claims 3 and 7 incorporated with other limitations as claimed in the independent claims.
Pertinent Arts
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Bernat (US 20200073464 A1) discloses the prediction logic unit 1702 may predict, at a given time, the future (e.g., subsequent) power utilization of each kernel executed on the accelerator sled 1610 and the time period over which each kernel will have that predicted power utilization before moving on to a subsequent phase of power utilization.
Conclusion
Examiner's note: Examiner has cited particular paragraphs and columns and line numbers in the references as applied to the claims above for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings of the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested from the applicant in preparing responses, to fully consider the references in entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the examiner (see MPEP § 2123).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PHIL K NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571)270-3356. The examiner can normally be reached 9:30 a.m - 5 p.m.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Jaweed Abbaszadeh can be reached at (571)270-1640. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/PHIL K NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2176
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