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 § 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, 10, & 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by La Fratta et al. PG Pub US 2023/0060826 A1 [hereinafter La Fratta].
Regarding claims 1, 10 & 16, La Fratta discloses:
receiving a plurality of commands at a controller (the memory sub-system controller 115 can receive commands or operations from the host system 120 and can convert the commands or operations into instructions or appropriate commands to achieve the desired access to the memory devices 130 [0027]);
organizing the plurality of commands into a priority queue (The command queue component 311 can include multiple command queues 312-1, 312-2, . . . , 312-N (individually or collectively referred to as command queue 312) [0041] The priority of the commands can be determined by multiple factors including, but not limited to, the scheduling policy used in the command scheduling component, the type of the command, and the age of the command [0031]);
selecting, from the priority queue, a command from the plurality of commands to issue to a memory device based on a first-ready, first-come, first-served (FRFCFS) command selection policy, wherein the FRFCFS command selection policy is modified such that a bank of the memory device associated with an oldest read command is opened (When the read priority of the FRFCFS command scheduler is enabled, if the oldest read command 544 of the memory bank is not the oldest read command 544 of the row of the memory bank, the oldest read command 544 of that row of the memory bank, instead of the oldest read command 544 of the memory bank, can be added to the scheduling candidate list 503 [0057] the processing device can add the activate command for the row of the memory bank that is accessed by the oldest read command to the command scheduler in response to determining the memory bank has a corresponding read command in response to determining that the memory bank is not active [0062]).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-9, 11-15, & 17-20 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 art of record fails to disclose “counting, with the controller, a number of banks ready to receive commands; comparing the number of the banks ready to a threshold value; and based on the comparing, preempting the modified FRFCFS command policy and selecting at least one read command of the plurality of commands associated with at least one of the banks ready to receive commands to issue to the memory device.”
The closest prior art, Dutu et al. PG Pub 2024/0220107 A1 [hereinafter Dutu], discloses the use of counters to track the number of banks that are active and ready to receive commands. However, Dutu uses the counters to modify the stall thresholds and not to preempt the modified FRFCFS command policy and selecting at least one read command of the plurality of commands associated with at least one of the banks ready to receive commands to issue to the memory device
Claims 3-9, 12-15, & 18-20 are objected for depending on objected claims 2, 11, & 17.
Notes
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Van der Veen et al. PG Pub US 2024/0312508 A1 discloses counting, by a DRAM device, a number of row activation commands directed to each row of a bank of the DRAM device.
Balakrishnan PG Pub US 2022/0317923 A1 discloses tracked bank group numbers in entries of a bank group tracking circuit.
Conclusion
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/SEAN D ROSSITER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2133