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 .
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, 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 1-5, 7-12 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Malik et al. (US 10,761,561), hereinafter referred to as malik in view of Richard et al. (US 10,505,837), hereinafter referred as Richard.
Referring to claim 1, Malik teaches, as claimed, a method for communicating data in an integrated circuit comprising at least two interconnected sub-blocks in a System-on-Chip (SoC) arrangement (see fig. 1, col. 8, lines 60-65), the method comprising: transmitting, from a first sub-block to a second sub-block of the at least two interconnected sub-blocks (i.e.-from master/requesting component to slave/destination component that are interconnected, col. 9, lines 13-20 and 54-57), a first signal asserting that the first sub-block is ready to transmit data to the second sub-block (i.e.-sending tvalid signal indicating ready to transmit, col. 15, lines 52-55); receiving, from the second sub-block, at the first sub-block, a second signal, the second signal asserting that the second sub-block is ready to receive data from the first sub-block (i.e.-receiving at the master component tready signal indicating ready to receive signal, col. 15, lines 56-59); and transmitting data via a third signal from the first sub-block to the second sub-block during one or more clock cycles of the integrated circuit (i.e.-sending from the master component to the slave/destination component tdata, col. 15, lines 60-61 and col. 16, lines 11-16).
However, Malik does not teach wherein the data comprising one or more contiguous messages; and wherein the first signal comprises, at an end of a transmission of the one or more contiguous messages, information that enables the second sub-block to determine a position of an end of a last message of the one or more contiguous messages.
On the other hand, Richard discloses method and apparatus configured for data link optimization, wherein one or more contiguous messages (i.e.-PKT0, PKT1, PKT2, PKT3…, col. 3, lines 41-44) comprising, at an end of a transmission of the message, information that enables to determine a position of an end of a last message of the one or more contiguous messages (i.e.-end-of-packet indicator for PKT0, col. 3, line 60).
Therefore, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to modify the teachings of Malik so that the data comprises one or more contiguous messages, and wherein the first signal comprises, at an end of a transmission of the one or more contiguous messages, information that enables the second sub-block to determine a position of an end of a last message of the one or more contiguous messages, as taught by Richard. The motivation for doing so would have been to rearrange the data so as to pack the data into a more compact data structure for transmission over the link.
As to claim 2, the modified Malik in view of Richard teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the position of the end of the last message comprises a byte position in the third signal during a clock cycle containing the end of the transmission (see Richard, col. 4, lines 9-10; 14-15; 16-18).
As to claim 3, the modified Malik in view of Richard innately teaches the method of claim 2, wherein the end of the last message comprises a last byte in the third signal during the clock cycle containing the end of the transmission (i.e.-last bytes – 28 data bytes, see Richard, col. 4, lines 9-10 and 14-15).
As to claim 4, the modified Malik in view of Richard teaches the method of claim 3, wherein the information that enables the second sub-block to determine the position of the end of the last message comprises information indicating that the end of the last message is the last byte of the third signal (see Richard, col. 4, lines 14-15 and 9-10).
As to claim 5, the modified Malik in view of Richard teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the position of the end of the last message is provided in a last byte in the third signal during a clock cycle containing the end of the transmission (see Richard, col. 5, lines 21-22 and line 50).
As to claim 7, the modified Malik teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the first signal comprises information indicating transmission of an event message from the first sub-block (see Malik, col. 9, lines 13-16).
Referring to claims 8-12 and 14, the claims are substantially the same as claims 1-5 and 7, hence the rejection of claims 1-4 and 7 is applied accordingly.
Claim Objections
Claims 6 and 13 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.
Examiner’s note:
Examiner has cited particular columns and line numbers in the references 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 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 passages as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the Examiner.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Masiewicz (US 7,673,075), Shaw et al. (US 7,739,432), Azam et al. (US 2009/0006657), Li (US 10,608,778), Zhu et al. (US 2024/0192888), Jeon et al. (US 11,659,070) and Balakrishnan et al. (US 9,148,274) do teach method and system for enabling consecutive command/message processing and transfers between a device and a host.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ELIAS MAMO whose telephone number is (571)270-1726. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Thu, 7 AM - 5 PM.
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/Elias Mamo/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2184
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