Ex Parte Kim et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardJun 24, 201412195198 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 24, 2014) Copy Citation UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE United States Patent and Trademark Office Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS P.O. Box 1450 Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450 www.uspto.gov APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. 12/195,198 08/20/2008 John Kim 42P46096 8039 45209 7590 06/25/2014 Mission/BSTZ BLAKELY SOKOLOFF TAYLOR & ZAFMAN 1279 Oakmead Parkway Sunnyvale, CA 94085-4040 EXAMINER NAJJAR, SALEH ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2492 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 06/25/2014 PAPER Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding. The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication. PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________________ Ex parte JOHN KIM, DENNIS C. ABTS, STEVEN L. SCOTT, and WILLIAM J. DALLY ____________________ Appeal 2012-003568 Application 12/195,198 Technology Center 2400 ____________________ Before: EDWARD A. BROWN, JAMES P. CALVE, and THOMAS F. SMEGAL, Administrative Patent Judges. CALVE, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from the final rejection of claims 1–20. App. Br. 4. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM. Appeal 2012-003568 Application 12/195,198 2 CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER Claims 1, 10, 19, and 20 are independent. Claim 1 is reproduced below. 1. A multiprocessor computer system comprising a dragonfly processor interconnect network, the dragonfly processor interconnect network comprising: a plurality of processor nodes; a plurality of routers, each router directly coupled to a plurality of terminal processor nodes, the routers coupled to one another and arranged into a group, and a plurality of groups of routers, such that each group is connected to each other group via at least one direct connection. REJECTIONS1 Claims 1–9 and 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which Applicants regard as the invention.2 Claims 1–20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over McCanne (US 2003/0088696 A1; pub. May 8, 2003). 1 The Examiner also rejected claims 2–9 and 11–18 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over McCanne and Scott (Scott, “The Black Widow High-Radix Clos Network, Proc. of the 33rd Int’l Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA’06), (2006)). Ans. 5–6. Appellants do not indicate that this rejection is being appealed. App. Br. 8, 9–12. Accordingly, we summarily affirm this rejection. 2 Although the Examiner rejected claims 1-11 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, the Examiner did not indicate any basis for rejecting independent claim 10. Ans. 4. Appeal 2012-003568 Application 12/195,198 3 ANALYSIS Claims 1–9 and 11 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, as indefinite Claims 1-9 The Examiner found claim 1 to be indefinite because it recites a plurality of “processor nodes” and also recites “terminal processor nodes” and it is unclear what distinction exists between these two limitations. Ans. 4. Appellants do not present any argument for this rejection. App. Br. 11. We summarily sustain the rejection of claim 1 and its dependent claims 2-9. Claims 2 and 11 Claims 2 and 11 depend from claims 1 and 10 respectively and recite “wherein each group acts as virtual router with radix of approximately 2 times the square root of the number of nodes in the network.” The Examiner found that the term “approximately” was indefinite because “it [was] unclear how approximate the radix should be from the 2 times the square root of the number of nodes in the network.” Ans. 4. We agree with Appellants that “approximate” would be understood by one skilled in the art to mean “about” in view of Appellants’ disclosure of this arrangement. App. Br. 11; see Spec. 6, ll. 1–12. We do not sustain the rejection of claims 2 and 11 on this ground. Thus, we sustain the rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, as to claims 1-9, but not as to claim 11. Claims 1–20 as unpatentable over McCanne Claims 1–18 Appellants argue claims 1–18 as a group. App. Br. 9–11. We select claim 1 as representative. 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii) (2011). Claims 2–18 stand or fall with claim 1. Appeal 2012-003568 Application 12/195,198 4 The Examiner found that McCanne discloses a multiprocessor computer system comprising an interconnect network as recited in claim 1, including a plurality of processor nodes (para. 62) and a plurality of routers where each router is coupled directly to a plurality of terminal processor nodes (fig. 2), the routers coupled to one another and arranged into a group, and a plurality of groups of routers (para. 50) where each group is connected to each other group via at least one direct connection (para. 83). Ans. 4–5 (citing McCanne,¶¶ 62, 50, 83). The Examiner found that the routers are coupled directly to a plurality of terminal processor nodes (clients) and the routers are “grouped together” in Transit Domains that are connected by at least one direct connection. Ans. 6–7(citing McCanne, ¶43; fig. 2). Appellants argue that “McCanne fails to consider routers coupled to one another and arranged into a group, each router directly coupled to a plurality of terminal processor nodes.” App. Br. 9, 10.3 Appellants assert that the dragonfly network includes routers coupled to multiple processor nodes and one another to form multiple groups. Id. at 10. Appellants further argue that paragraph 50 of McCanne discloses an “overlay protocol router used for multicast routing, but fails to discuss any of the router limitations . . . such as (1) the routers being directly coupled to a plurality of terminal processor nodes, (2) the routers being coupled to one another arranged into a group, or (3) a plurality of groups of such routers, where each group is connected to each other group via at least one direct connection.” Id. at 9. 3 Appellants provide these arguments generally without subheadings for a particular independent claim. App. Br. 9–11. Therefore, we treat these arguments as pertaining to independent claims 1 and 10, which contain these limitations, and to their dependent claims, but as not applicable to claims 19 and 20, which do not contain such limitations. Appeal 2012-003568 Application 12/195,198 5 These arguments are not persuasive because they do not address the Examiner’s findings that McCanne discloses these features in Figure 2 and paragraphs 43 and 83. Ans. 5, 6–7. The Examiner relies on Figure 2 of McCanne to show a plurality of processor nodes (clients) that are connected to overlay routers in a transit domain and the overlay routers are coupled to one another in transit domains and arranged in groups that are connected by at least one direct connection. Ans. 4–5, 6–7. Figure 2 also illustrates overlay routers (OR) arranged in leaf and transit domains to control traffic through a leaf VIF (LVIF). McCanne, ¶ 62. McCanne discloses that “an overlay network model is a collection of isolated (but possibly overlapping) regions of native multicast connectivity” with overlay routers deployed across the multicast clouds to peer with each other via unicast or multicast and form a network of application or unicast forwarding agents. Id., ¶ 43. Once a packet is delivered to an overlay router via multicast or direct unicast communication, “it is propagated to all other LVIFs and unicast receivers in the over lay network that include members interested in receiving traffic sent to that overlay group.” Id., ¶ 83. Appellants also argue that the claims recite a processor interconnect network called dragonfly which links processor nodes to one another in a processor interconnect network and the Final Office Action cites only a computer terminal which is not a multiprocessor computer. App. Br. 9–10. This argument is not persuasive of error in the Examiner’s finding that McCanne discloses the functionality of a dragonfly processor network by teaching a processor architecture with connections, routers, and processors, as claimed. Ans. 5, 7. Claim 1 recites a dragonfly processor interconnect network that comprises a plurality of processor nodes, a plurality of routers, Appeal 2012-003568 Application 12/195,198 6 and plurality of groups of routers. The Examiner found all of these claimed features in McCanne. Appellants have not identified a definition or other disclosure in the Specification that distinguishes the claimed dragonfly processor interconnect network over McCanne. Appellants disclose that the Dragonfly topology is a hierarchical network with three levels as shown in Figure 1 of terminal processor nodes “tcx”, routers 104, 105, 106, and groups 101, 102, 103. Spec. 8, ll. 22–23. Figure 2 of McCanne is reproduced below along with Appellants’ Figure 1 below it: Figure 2 of McCanne illustrates an overlay network Appellants’ Figure 1 illustrates a dragonfly network topology. Appeal 2012-003568 Application 12/195,198 7 We agree with the Examiner that McCanne discloses the claimed dragonfly network topology comprising the claimed three levels of (1) processor nodes (clients), (2) a plurality of routers coupled to one another and arranged into groups (overlay routers (OR) arranged in transit domains), and (3) plurality of groups of routers connected to other groups (ORs of transit domains connected to ORs or other transit domains) as shown in Figure 2 of McCanne. Appellants’ arguments do not persuade us of error in those findings of the Examiner. We sustain the rejection of claims 1–18. Claims 19 and 20 Claim 19 recites “A multiprocessor computer system, comprising a Dragonfly processor interconnect network.” Claim 20 recites “A method of communicating data between processing nodes in a multiprocessor computer system, comprising routing the data over a Dragonfly processor interconnect network.” Appellants do not present separate arguments for independent claims 19 and 20 under separate heading. See App. Br. 9–11. Appellants’ arguments regarding the dragonfly processor interconnect network, which is recited in claims 19 and 20, are not persuasive for the reasons discussed supra for claim 1. We sustain the rejection of claims 19 and 20. DECISION We AFFIRM the rejection of claim 1-9 and REVERSE the rejection of claim 11 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph. We AFFIRM the prior art rejections of claims 1–20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). Appeal 2012-003568 Application 12/195,198 8 No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv). AFFIRMED llw Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation