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 .
Response to Amendment
The Amendment, filed on 4/23/2026, has been entered and acknowledged by the Examiner. Claims 1-9, 11-25, 27-41, and 43-51 are pending.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments with respect to claims 1-9, 11-25, 27-41, and 43-51 have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection.
Applicant's arguments filed 4/23/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Issue: The applicant argues that Applicant submits that Mittal and Pasupuleti fail to render amended claim 1 obvious. In the rejection of previously presented claim 10 set forth by the Office Action, the Examiner maps the limitations of updating the first pending transaction record via an indivisible read-modify-write memory transaction, recited in previously presented claim 10, to the idea of appending or adding a new row to a pending messages table, disclosed in Mittal. Based on these mappings, the pending messages table of Mittal would have to be updated using an indivisible read- modify-write memory transaction. Mittal is silent in this regard. Instead, Mittal discloses a pending messages table that is updated by appending new rows to the pending messages table rather than using an indivisible read-modify-write memory transaction to an entire pending transaction journal, as explicitly required by the limitations of claim 1.
Response: The examiner respectfully disagrees and submits that the limitation that previously presented in claim 10, “updating the first pending transaction record via an indivisible read-modify-write memory transaction,” is not the same in scope of the current amended limitation, “the pending transaction journal being updated via an indivisible read-modify-write memory transaction,” of claim 1, for, at least, updating the first pending transaction RECORD versus the pending transaction JOURNAL being updated. If the claims are intended to treat journal and record as the same, then it is needed to recite as such. Unless they are not the same, then there is a need to make the distinction. In addition, Mittal’s disclosure can utilize the old and well-known technique of indivisible read-modify-write when processing an update to the pending messages table to further include the row, corresponding to the message identifier using since there’s no restriction to such. Therefore, the applicant’s argument is not persuasive.
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.
Claims 1-9, 11-25, 27-41, and 43-48 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Mittal (US Pub. 2020/0183951) in view of Pasupuleti (US Pub. 2012/0059963), and further in view of Beale (US Pub. 2017/0024131).
Regarding claim 1, Mittal discloses one or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing program instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of a computing device, cause the one or more processors to perform a method comprising:
receiving a write operation directed to at least one data block in a first location of a storage device (¶ [0101], read/ write operation in a key/value store without compare and commit operations);
storing write data associated with the write operation in a key-value store associated with the first location of the storage device (¶¶ [0101]- [0102]); and
storing a first pending transaction record associated with the write operation in a pending transaction journal, wherein the pending transaction journal comprises a single storage page that further includes all other pending transaction records associated with other write operations associated with the storage device (¶ [0091], Prior to committing the uncommitted entries in the journal, the first node rejects any pending transactions corresponding to the one or more additional sequence identifiers).
Mittal does not explicitly disclose a single storage page; however, Pasupuleti discloses a single storage page (¶ [0062], single storage page).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Pasupuleti into Mittal to effectively cache or buffer pages that have been read.
Mittal and Pasupuleti do not explicitly disclose the pending transaction journal being updated via an indivisible read-modify-write memory transaction, but Beale discloses being updated via an indivisible read-modify-write memory transaction (¶ [0079], the intelligent processor module 108 further supports an indivisible read-modify-write cycle, or Readlock. In example implementations, Restricted Transactional Memory (RTM) present in Intel's Broadwell and later processors may be used).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Beale into Pasupuleti and Mittal to utilize interlocked primitives to ensure data integrity.
Regarding claim 2, Mittal in view of Pasupuleti and Beale disclose the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 1, wherein the single storage page is equivalent in size to a size of a single block of the storage device (P, ¶ [0062]).
Regarding claim 3, Mittal in view of Pasupuleti and Beale disclose the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 1, wherein the single storage page is four kilobytes in size (P, ¶ [0062]).
Regarding claim 4, Mittal in view of Pasupuleti and Beale disclose the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 1, wherein the key-value store that includes the write data is stored separately from the pending transaction journal (M, ¶ [0045]).
Regarding claim 5, Mittal in view of Pasupuleti and Beale disclose the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 4, wherein the key-value store comprises a B-tree (P, ¶ [0066], B-tree).
Regarding claim 6, Mittal in view of Pasupuleti and Beale disclose the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 5, wherein the B-tree comprises a plurality of nodes, wherein each of the plurality of nodes comprises metadata for a respective location of the storage device (P, ¶ [0066], B-tree).
Regarding claim 7, Mittal in view of Pasupuleti and Beale disclose the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 6, wherein each of the plurality of nodes is stored in a respective single block of the storage device (M, ¶ [0099], logical block).
Regarding claim 8, Mittal in view of Pasupuleti and Beale disclose the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 1, wherein the write operation stores data to the at least one data block (M, ¶ [0099]).
Regarding claim 9, Mittal in view of Pasupuleti and Beale disclose the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 1, wherein the first pending transaction record comprises an identifier of the first location of the storage device and a logical transaction sequence identifier (M, ¶ [0042], the sequence identifiers among the replica nodes.).
Regarding claim 11, Mittal in view of Pasupuleti and Beale disclose the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises: determining that the write operation is complete; and removing the first pending transaction record from the pending transaction journal (M, ¶ [0070]).
Regarding claim 12, Mittal in view of Pasupuleti and Beale disclose the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises: prefetching a plurality of data blocks associated with the storage device (M, ¶ [0028]); storing, in the pending transaction journal, a number identifying how many data blocks were prefetched as a number of prefetched blocks (M, ¶ [0028], a sequence of transactions before instructing all nodes to commit the transactions); storing, in the pending transaction journal, the number identifying how many data blocks were prefetched as a number of free blocks (M, ¶ [0028]); and storing, in the pending transaction journal, a set of block identifiers, wherein each data block identifier in the set of block identifiers identifies a different data block in the plurality of data blocks (M, ¶ [0042]).
Regarding claim 13, Mittal in view of Pasupuleti and Beale disclose the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises: assigning a first data block to the write operation (P, ¶ [0130]); and decrementing a number of free blocks indicated by the single storage page (P, ¶ [0130].
Regarding claim 14, Mittal in view of Pasupuleti and Beale disclose the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 13, wherein the method further comprises: determining that the first data block should be overwritten (¶ [0077]); and incrementing the number of free blocks (P, ¶ [0077]).
Regarding claim 15, Mittal in view of Pasupuleti and Beale disclose the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 1, wherein the pending transaction journal stores a mapping of a logical address in at least one data block to a physical address in the first location of the storage device (M, ¶ [0099], logical block).
Regarding claim 16, Mittal in view of Pasupuleti and Beale disclose the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 1, wherein pending transaction journal further comprises a map of free blocks of the storage device (P, ¶ [0080], mapping).
Regarding claims 17-25 and 27-32, see discussion of claims 1-9 and 11-16 above for the same reason of rejection.
Regarding claims 33-41 and 43-48 see discussion of claims 1-9 and 11-16 above for the same reason of rejection.
Claims 49-51 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Mittal (US Pub. 2020/0183951) in view of Pasupuleti (US Pub. 2012/0059963), in view of Beale (US Pub. 2017/0024131), and further in view of Kwon (US Pub. 2021/0182157).
Regarding claim 49 (and 50-51), Mittal in view of Pasupuleti and Beale disclose the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 1, but do not disclose wherein the single storage page further includes a checksum and a version field, and wherein the method further comprises recovering the pending transaction journal after a crash of the computing device using the checksum and the version field; however Kwon discloses wherein the single storage page further includes a checksum and a version field, and wherein the method further comprises recovering the pending transaction journal after a crash of the computing device using the checksum and the version field (¶ [0048], the version of the persisted savepoint image being used for recovery, and the data of the page is consistent with its checksum. The page may be deemed reusable if all three conditions are true).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Kwon into Mittal, Pasupuleti and Beale to avoid reusing corrupted data pages of the shared memory.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TUANKHANH D PHAN whose telephone number is (571)270-3047. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Fri, 10:00am-18:00pm.
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/TUANKHANH D PHAN/ Examiner, Art Unit 2154
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