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
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 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Croxford et al. (US 2023/0126531) in view of Vaidyanathan et al. (US 2024/0257437).
Regarding claim 1, Croxford discloses an eyewear device comprising: circuitry comprising a hardware accelerator configured to: identify an input that indicates one or more features of an instance of graphical imagery (abstract, fig. 1, ¶ 1-5, ¶ 30-40, GPU uses memory management unit to traverse ray tracing acceleration data structure; see also ¶ 69-75, figs. 6-7);
and perform, based at least in part on the input, one or more lookup operations via one or more arrays to obtain an output used to approximate computation of a rendering of the instance of graphical imagery (fig. 1, figs. 6-7, ¶ 30-40, GPU uses memory management unit to traverse ray tracing acceleration data structure; see also ¶ 65-75, figs. 6-7, hierarchy of tables disclosed; see also ¶ 149);
and a display configured to present the rendering of the instance of graphical imagery to the user (fig. 1, display panel 7, ¶ 1-5, ¶ 30-40).
Croxford fails to disclose an eyewear frame dimensioned to be worn by a user; circuitry coupled to the eyewear frame, and a display coupled to the eyewear frame.
Vaidyanathan teaches an eyewear frame dimensioned to be worn by a user; circuitry coupled to the eyewear frame, and a display coupled to the eyewear frame (abstract, figs. 1-3, see ¶ 4-5, ¶ 94, head mounted display disclosed; see also ¶ 124-130, ¶ 140-142).
Croxford and Vaidyanathan are both directed to graphics rendering for displays. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the device of Croxford with the device of Vaidyanathan since such a modification provides a head mount display (Vaidyanathan, ¶ 94) that can render scenes in real-time with complex material appearance (Vaidyanathan, ¶ 4).
Regarding claim 2, Croxford discloses wherein the hardware accelerator is further configured to: perform a sequence of lookup operations via a primary array and a cascaded array (fig. 1, figs. 6-7, ¶ 30-40, GPU uses memory management unit to traverse ray tracing acceleration data structure; see also ¶ 65-75, figs. 6-7, hierarchy of tables disclosed; see also ¶ 149);
and combine a set of outputs from the cascaded array to form a primitive used to approximate computation for the rendering (fig. 1, figs. 6-7, ¶ 30-40, GPU uses memory management unit to traverse ray tracing acceleration data structure; see also ¶ 65-75, figs. 6-7, series of one or more table lookups progresses through the hierarchy of tables; see also ¶ 149, ¶ 367-375).
Regarding claim 3, Croxford discloses wherein the hardware accelerator is further configured to: obtain a first output from the primary array by performing a first lookup operation on the primary array (fig. 1, figs. 6-7, ¶ 30-40, GPU uses memory management unit to traverse ray tracing acceleration data structure; see also ¶ 65-75, figs. 6-7, series of one or more table lookups progresses through the hierarchy of tables; see also ¶ 149, ¶ 367-375);
apply the first output as an additional input for a subsequent lookup operation on the cascaded array (fig. 1, figs. 6-7, ¶ 30-40, GPU uses memory management unit to traverse ray tracing acceleration data structure; see also ¶ 65-75, figs. 6-7, series of one or more table lookups progresses through the hierarchy of tables; see also ¶ 149, ¶ 367-375);
and obtain the set of outputs from the cascaded array by performing the subsequent lookup operation with the additional input on the cascaded array (fig. 1, figs. 6-7, ¶ 30-40, GPU uses memory management unit to traverse ray tracing acceleration data structure; see also ¶ 65-75, figs. 6-7, series of one or more table lookups progresses through the hierarchy of tables; see also ¶ 149, ¶ 367-375).
Regarding claim 4, Croxford discloses a cache memory configured to store the cascaded array (¶ 42-49, see also ¶ 61-75, cache disclosed; see also fig. 9 and ¶ 391-401),
wherein the hardware accelerator is further configured to perform a first lookup operation on the primary array to obtain a pointer that identifies a location at which the primitive is stored in the cache memory (fig. 1, figs. 6-7, ¶ 30-40, GPU uses memory management unit to traverse ray tracing acceleration data structure; see also ¶ 65-75, figs. 6-7, series of one or more table lookups progresses through the hierarchy of tables; see also ¶ 149, ¶ 367-375).
Regarding claim 5, Croxford discloses wherein the hardware accelerator is further configured to generate the rendering by applying the primitive to the instance of graphical imagery (fig. 1, figs. 6-7, ¶ 30-40; see also ¶ 65-75, figs. 6-7; see also ¶ 149, ¶ 367-382, shading performed based on ray casting).
Regarding claim 6, Croxford discloses wherein the hardware accelerator is further configured to shade the rendering based at least in part on the primitive (fig. 1, figs. 6-7, ¶ 30-40; see also ¶ 65-75, figs. 6-7; see also ¶ 149, ¶ 367-382, shading performed based on ray casting).
Regarding claim 7, Croxford discloses wherein: the hardware accelerator comprises at least a portion of a graphics processing unit (GPU) (fig. 1, figs. 6-7, ¶ 30-40, GPU uses memory management unit to traverse ray tracing acceleration data structure; see also ¶ 42-49, ¶ 65-75, figs. 6-7).
Croxford in view of Vaidyanathan fails to explicitly disclose the cascaded array comprises a 16-by-16 array of memory locations in the cache memory. However, Examiner takes official notice that the use of a 16-by-16 array of memory locations in cache memory is well known in the art. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the device of Croxford in view of Vaidyanathan with the well-known 16-by-16 cache memory array since such a modification achieves the predictable result of providing an appropriately sized memory array for data storage.
Regarding claim 8, Croxford discloses wherein the output used to approximate computation of the rendering comprises a function that approximates at least one of: a graphics-rendering algorithm; a texture-compression algorithm; or a graphics-compression algorithm (fig. 1, figs. 6-7, ¶ 30-40; see also ¶ 65-75, figs. 6-7; see also ¶ 149, ¶ 367-382, shading performed based on ray casting).
Regarding claim 9, Croxford discloses wherein the hardware accelerator is further configured to: store data representative of another instance of the graphical imagery in the one or more arrays to facilitate the one or more lookup operations at a subsequent moment in time; or store data representative of additional graphical imagery that is comparable to the graphical imagery in the one or more arrays to facilitate the one or more lookup operations at a subsequent moment in time (¶ 94-97, locally stored traversals checked to determine is some or all of it can be used for a new ray).
Regarding claim 10, Croxford discloses wherein the one or more features indicated by the input comprise at least one of: direction of light applied to or represented in the instance of graphical imagery; surface roughness of at least a portion of the instance of graphical imagery; metallicity of at least a portion of the instance of graphical imagery; anisotropy of at least a portion of the instance of graphical imagery; specularity of at least a portion of the instance of graphical imagery; or sheen of at least a portion of the instance of graphical imagery (fig. 1, figs. 6-7, ¶ 30-40; see also ¶ 65-75, figs. 6-7; see also ¶ 149, ¶ 367-382, shading performed based on ray casting).
Regarding claim 11, this claim is rejected under the same rationale as claim 1.
Regarding claim 12, this claim is rejected under the same rationale as claim 2.
Regarding claim 13, this claim is rejected under the same rationale as claim 3.
Regarding claim 14, this claim is rejected under the same rationale as claim 4.
Regarding claim 15, this claim is rejected under the same rationale as claim 5.
Regarding claim 16, this claim is rejected under the same rationale as claim 6.
Regarding claim 17, this claim is rejected under the same rationale as claim 7.
Regarding claim 18, this claim is rejected under the same rationale as claim 8.
Regarding claim 19, this claim is rejected under the same rationale as claim 9.
Regarding claim 20, this claim is rejected under the same rationale as claim 1.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure: See attached Notice of References Cited.
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/KEITH L CRAWLEY/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2626