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 .
DETAILED ACTION
This communication is in response to application filed on 6/4/2025 in which claims 1-20 are presented for examination.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 3/17/2026, and 5/8/2026 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
Claim 1: The term "among" in line 3 is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term "among" is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention.
Claim 1: The term "communicatively" in line 6 is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term "communicatively" is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention.
Claim 1: The term "respective" in line 12 is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term "respective" is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention.
Claim 1: The term "properly" in line 9 is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term "properly" is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention.
Claim 4: The term "among" in line 3 is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term "among" is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention.
Claim 10: The term "more" in line 3 is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term "more" is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention.
Claim 11: The term "less" in line 3 is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term "more" is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention.
Claim 13 recited similar limitations and same rejection applies.
The dependent claims included in the statement of rejection but not specifically addressed in the body of the rejection have inherited the deficiencies of their parent claim and have not resolved the deficiencies. Therefore, they are rejected based on the same rationale as applied to their parent claims above.
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.
Claim(s) 1-6, 13-18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sridharan et al. (US 20180322387 A1) hereinafter “Sridhara” in view of Kidd et al. (US 20170102693 A1) hereinafter “Kidd”.
As to claim 1, Sridharan discloses a method of executing a distributed application with a plurality of endpoint processing units (EPUs) that perform computations for the distributed application (Sridharan [56-60], discloses wherein the embodiment includes different clusters of the processing cluster arrays for processing different types of programs or for performing different types of computations), the method comprising:
configuring a plurality of network interfaces of the plurality of EPUs to forward, among the EPUs, results of the computations performed by the EPUs for the distributed application, said configured network interfaces forwarding the EPU computation results through a plurality of forwarding elements that form a network that communicatively connects the EPUs (Sridharan [125-127, 194-197], discloses wherein the embodiments arrangement allows the host processor software to setup operands and access computation results, and the efficiency of results of the GPU computations in determining the effectiveness of GPU, including performing forward propagation independently on each node);
collecting data regarding forwarding operations that the forwarding elements perform to forward results of the EPU computations (Sridharan [134-135, 194-197], discloses wherein across all processes in a group is collected in one specified process);
Sridharan is silent on analyzing the collected data to detect that a particular forwarding element is not properly operating; and re-configuring at least a set of one or more network interfaces to circumvent the particular forwarding element as the set of network interfaces are forwarding their respective EPU computation results.
However, Kidd discloses analyzing the collected data to detect that a particular forwarding element is not properly operating (Kidd [91, 116-118, 129-131], discloses fault detection monitor, wherein data collection and attributes are used for detecting/predicting faults); and
re-configuring at least a set of one or more network interfaces to circumvent the particular forwarding element as the set of network interfaces are forwarding their respective EPU computation results (Kidd [129-131, 135-136], discloses data appliance receivers is configured to send/receive data, and wherein the results of the analyses performed by the big data analyzers 170 can be stored in the big data appliance storage area 155, and/or can be forwarded/returned to a requesting entity or application).
Sridharan and Kidd are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor, namely, systems and methods of distributed data processing. before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of Sridharan and Kidd before him or her, to modify the allocation processes of programs for performing different types of computations system of Sridharan to include the distributed data analysis system of Kidd with reasonable expectation that this would result in a system that is able to collect the data from the computation results and analyze the information for enhancing the respective processing units. This method of improving the system of Sridharan was well within the ordinary ability of one of ordinary skill in the art based on the teachings of Kidd. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Sridharan with Kidd to obtain the invention as specified in claim 1.
As to claim 2, Sridharan-Kidd discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the EPUs are graphics processing units (GPUs) (Sridhara [46-49], discloses EPU/processing units are GPUs). The Examiner supplies the same rationale for the combination of references Sridharan and Kidd as in claim 1 above.
As to claim 3, Sridharan-Kidd discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the EPUs comprise at least one of graphics processing units (GPUs), tensor processing units (TPUs) and central processing units (CPUs) (Sridhara Fig19A [46-49, 147, 231-232], discloses EPU/processing units/GPUs, tensor/CPU). The Examiner supplies the same rationale for the combination of references Sridharan and Kidd as in claim 1 above.
As to claim 4, Sridharan-Kidd discloses the method of claim 1 further comprising: configuring the plurality of forwarding elements to forward results of the EPU computations for the distributed application among the EPUs (Sridharan [246-248], discloses wherein distributing training of the neural network can be performed using graphics processing logic); and
after said detection, re-configuring at least a set of one or more forwarding elements to circumvent the particular forwarding element as the set of forwarding elements are forwarding the EPU computation results (Kidd [129-131, 135-136], discloses data appliance receivers is configured to send/receive data, and wherein the results of the analyses performed by the big data analyzers 170 can be stored in the big data appliance storage area 155, and/or can be forwarded/returned to a requesting entity or application). The Examiner supplies the same rationale for the combination of references Sridharan and Kidd as in claim 1 above.
As to claim 5, Sridharan-Kidd discloses the method of claim 1 further comprising collecting data regarding forwarding operations that the EPU network interfaces perform to forward results of the EPU computations (Kidd [91, 116-118, 129-131], discloses fault detection monitor, wherein data collection and attributes are used for detecting/predicting faults). The Examiner supplies the same rationale for the combination of references Sridharan and Kidd as in claim 1 above.
As to claim 6, Sridharan-Kidd discloses the method of claim 5, wherein analyzing the collected data comprises producing data quantifying performance of network interface and forwarding elements (Kidd [91, 116-118, 129-131], discloses fault detection monitor, wherein data collection and attributes are analyzed and used for detecting/predicting performance/faults and forwarding/sending the requesting node) The Examiner supplies the same rationale for the combination of references Sridharan and Kidd as in claim 5 above.
As to claim 13, Sridharan discloses a non-transitory machine readable medium storing a program for configuring a network to connect a plurality of endpoint processing units (EPUs) that collectively execute a distributed application by performing computations for the distributed application and sharing results of the computations through the network (Sridharan [56-60], discloses wherein the embodiment includes different clusters of the processing cluster arrays for processing different types of programs or for performing different types of computations), the program comprising sets of instructions for:
configuring a plurality of network interfaces of the plurality of EPUs to forward, among the EPUs, results of the computations performed by the EPUs through the network (Sridharan [125-127, 194-197], discloses wherein the embodiments arrangement allows the host processor software to setup operands and access computation results, and the efficiency of results of the GPU computations in determining the effectiveness of GPU, including performing forward propagation independently on each node);
collecting data regarding forwarding operations that the forwarding elements perform to forward results of the EPU computations (Sridharan [134-135, 194-197], discloses wherein across all processes in a group is collected in one specified process);
Sridharan is silent on analyzing the collected data to detect that a particular forwarding element is not properly operating; and re-configuring at least a set of one or more network interfaces to circumvent the particular forwarding element as the set of network interfaces are forwarding their respective EPU computation results.
However, Kidd discloses analyzing the collected data to detect that a particular forwarding element is not properly operating (Kidd [91, 116-118, 129-131], discloses fault detection monitor, wherein data collection and attributes are used for detecting/predicting faults); and
re-configuring at least a set of one or more network interfaces to circumvent the particular forwarding element as the set of network interfaces are forwarding their respective EPU computation results (Kidd [129-131, 135-136], discloses data appliance receivers is configured to send/receive data, and wherein the results of the analyses performed by the big data analyzers 170 can be stored in the big data appliance storage area 155, and/or can be forwarded/returned to a requesting entity or application).
Sridharan and Kidd are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor, namely, systems and methods of distributed data processing. before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of Sridharan and Kidd before him or her, to modify the allocation processes of programs for performing different types of computations system of Sridharan to include the distributed data analysis system of Kidd with reasonable expectation that this would result in a system that is able to collect the data from the computation results and analyze the information for enhancing the respective processing units. This method of improving the system of Sridharan was well within the ordinary ability of one of ordinary skill in the art based on the teachings of Kidd. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Sridharan with Kidd to obtain the invention as specified in claim 13.
As to claim 14, Sridharan-Kidd discloses the non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 13, wherein the EPUs are graphics processing units (GPUs) (Sridhara [46-49], discloses EPU/processing units are GPUs). The Examiner supplies the same rationale for the combination of references Sridharan and Kidd as in claim 13 above.
As to claim 15, Sridharan-Kidd discloses the non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 13, wherein the EPUs comprise at least one of graphics processing units (GPUs), tensor processing units (TPUs) and central processing units (CPUs) (Sridhara Fig19A [46-49, 147, 231-232], discloses EPU/processing units/GPUs, tensor/CPU). The Examiner supplies the same rationale for the combination of references Sridharan and Kidd as in claim 13 above.
As to claim 16, Sridharan-Kidd discloses the non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 13, wherein the program further comprises sets of instructions for: configuring the plurality of forwarding elements to forward results of the EPU computations for the distributed application among the EPUs (Sridharan [246-248], discloses wherein distributing training of the neural network can be performed using graphics processing logic); and
after said detection, re-configuring at least a set of one or more forwarding elements to circumvent the particular forwarding element as the set of forwarding elements are forwarding the EPU computation results (Kidd [129-131, 135-136], discloses data appliance receivers is configured to send/receive data, and wherein the results of the analyses performed by the big data analyzers 170 can be stored in the big data appliance storage area 155, and/or can be forwarded/returned to a requesting entity or application). The Examiner supplies the same rationale for the combination of references Sridharan and Kidd as in claim 13 above.
As to claim 17, Sridharan-Kidd discloses the non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 13, wherein the program further comprises a set of instructions for collecting data regarding forwarding operations that the EPU network interfaces perform to forward results of the EPU computations (Kidd [91, 116-118, 129-131], discloses fault detection monitor, wherein data collection and attributes are used for detecting/predicting faults). The Examiner supplies the same rationale for the combination of references Sridharan and Kidd as in claim 13 above.
As to claim 18, Sridharan-Kidd discloses the non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 17, wherein the set of instructions for analyzing the collected data comprises a set of instructions for producing data quantifying performance of network interface and forwarding elements (Kidd [91, 116-118, 129-131], discloses fault detection monitor, wherein data collection and attributes are analyzed and used for detecting/predicting performance/faults and forwarding/sending the requesting node) The Examiner supplies the same rationale for the combination of references Sridharan and Kidd as in claim 17 above.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 7-12, and 19-20 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 prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. See Form 892.
Correspondence Information
The examiner also requests, in response to this Office action, support be shown for language added to any original claims on amendment and any new claims. That is, indicate support for newly added claim language by specifically pointing to page(s) and line no(s) in the specification and/or drawing figure(s). This will assist the examiner in prosecuting the application. When responding to this office action, Applicant is advised to clearly point out the patentable novelty which he or she thinks the claims present, in view of the state of the art disclosed by the references cited or the objections made. He or she must also show how the amendments avoid such references or objections See 37 CFR 1.111(c).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Razu Miah whose telephone number is (571)270-5433. The examiner can normally be reached M-F, 9-5 EST.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Glenton Burgess can be reached at 23949. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/RAZU A MIAH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2454
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