Ex Parte Walton et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Nov 16, 2016

12641001 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 16, 2016)

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.
12/641,001 12/17/2009 Andrew C. Walton 82260560 9790
56436 7590 11/18/2016
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
3404 E. Harmony Road
Mail Stop 79
Fort Collins, CO 80528
EXAMINER
HALE, TIM B
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3685
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
11/18/2016 ELECTRONIC
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.
Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the
following e-mail address(es):
hpe.ip.mail@hpe.com
mkraft@hpe.com
chris. mania @ hpe. com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte ANDREW C. WALTON, JEFFREY A. BARLOW, and
HOWARD CALKIN
Appeal 2014-004897
Application 12/641,001
Technology Center 3600
Before: MURRIEL E. CRAWFORD, ANTON W. FETTING, and
AMEE A. SHAH, Administrative Patent Judges.
FETTING, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE1
Andrew C. Walton, Jeffrey A. Barlow, and Howard Calkin (Appellants)
seek review under 35 U.S.C. § 134 the Examiner’s Final rejection of claims
1—3 and 5—9, the only claims pending in the application on appeal. We have
jurisdiction over the appeal pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We REVERSE.
1 Our decision will make reference to the Appellants’ Appeal Brief (“App.
Br.,” filed September 12, 2013) and Reply Brief (“Reply Br.,” filed February
28, 2014), and the Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.,” mailed December 31, 2013),
and Final Action (“Final Act.,” mailed May 24, 2013).
Appeal 2014-004897
Application 12/641,001
The Appellants invented a partitionable computer system. Specification
para. 9.
An understanding of the invention can be derived from a reading of
exemplary claim 1, which is reproduced below (bracketed matter and some
paragraphing added).
1. A system, comprising:
[1] a plurality of partitions,
each partition having its own operating system (OS) and
workload;
[2] a plurality of resources assignable to the plurality of
partitions;
and
[3] a processor configured to execute management logic
accessible to the plurality of partitions and the plurality of
resources,
[4] wherein the management logic is configured to set priority
rules for each of the plurality of partitions based on user input,
[5] wherein the management logic performs automated resource
fault management for the resources assigned to the plurality of
partitions based on the priority rules,
and
[6] wherein the priority rules designate
a first-level of said partitions, from which resources
cannot be unassigned,
and
second-level of said partitions, from which resources can
be unassigned
2
Appeal 2014-004897
Application 12/641,001
The Examiner relies upon the following prior art:
Yasuda
Landis et al.
(“Landis”)
Branda et al.
(“Branda”)
Oshins
Wein
US 2003/0070114 Al
US 2007/0028244 Al
US 2007/0174361 Al
US 2007/0204265 Al
US 2009/0037367 Al
Apr. 10, 2003
Leb. 1,2007
July 26, 2007
Aug. 30, 2007
Leb. 5, 2009
Claims 1 and 8 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Yasuda and Landis.
Claims 2 and 3 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Yasuda, Landis, and Branda.
Claims 5 and 6 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Yasuda, Landis, and Oshins.
Claim 7 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over
Yasuda, Landis, Oshins, and Wein.
Claim 9 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over
Yasuda, Landis, and Binns.
ISSUES
The issues of obviousness turn primarily on whether the art describes
setting priority rules for each of the plurality of partitions based on user
input where the priority rules indicate at least two levels of priority for being
able to unassign resources.
3
Appeal 2014-004897
Application 12/641,001
FACTS PERTINENT TO THE ISSUES
The following enumerated Findings of Fact (FF) are believed to be
supported by a preponderance of the evidence.
Facts Related to the Prior Art
Yasuda
01. Yasuda is directed to a recovery method and system for
recovering automatically from a fault, and a fault monitoring
apparatus and program used in a computer system. Yasuda para.
2.
02. Yasuda describes dividing a computer system of plural devices
into plural computer sub-systems referred to as partitions. Each
operating system acts independently in each partition. A fault
monitor is connected to the entire system, and a fault monitoring
agent monitors each partition. Yasuda paras. 304—310.
03. All references to levels of priority by Yasuda refer to fault
judging priority and not to resource maintenance priorities. See,
e.g., Yasuda paras. 30, 31, 208—210, 234, 275.
Landis
04. Landis is directed to computer system para-virtualization using
a hypervisor that is implemented in a distinct logical or virtual
partition of the host system so as to manage multiple operating
systems running in other distinct logical or virtual partitions of the
host system. The hypervisor implements a partition policy and
resource services that provide for more or less automatic operation
4
Appeal 2014-004897
Application 12/641,001
of the virtual partitions in a relatively failsafe manner. Landis
para. 1.
05. Landis provides virtualization infrastructure that allows
multiple guest partitions to run within a host hardware partition.
The host system is divided into distinct logical or virtual partitions
and special infrastructure partitions are implemented to control
resource management and to control physical I/O device drivers
that are, in turn, used by operating systems in other distinct logical
or virtual guest partitions. Host hardware resource management
runs as a tracking application in a resource management
“ultravisor” partition while host resource management decisions
are performed in a higher level “command” partition based on
policies maintained in an “operations” partition. This distributed
resource management approach provides for recovery of each
aspect of policy management independently in the event of a
system failure. Also, since the system resource management
functionality is implemented in the ultravisor partition, the roles of
the conventional hypervisor and containment element (monitor)
for the respective partitions are reduced in complexity and scope.
Landis para. 8.
06. Landis describes an ultravisor partition that maintains the
master in-memory database of the hardware resource allocations.
This low level resource manager serves a command channel to
accept transactional requests for assignment of resources to
partitions. It also provides individual read-only views of
individual partitions to the associated partition monitors.
5
Appeal 2014-004897
Application 12/641,001
Similarly, host hardware I/O management is implemented in
special redundant I/O partitions. Operating systems in other
logical or virtual partitions communicate with the I/O partitions
via memory channels established by the ultravisor partition.
Landis para. 9.
07. The resource manager application of the ultravisor partition
manages a resource database that keeps track of assignment of
resources to partitions and further serves a command channel to
accept transactional requests for assignment of the resources to
respective partitions. Ultravisor partition also includes a partition
(lead) monitor that is similar to a virtual machine monitor (VMM)
except that it provides individual read-only views of the resource
database in the ultravisor partition to the associated virtual
partition monitors of each virtual partition. Thus, unlike
conventional VMMs, each partition has its own monitor instance
such that failure of the monitor does not bring down the entire
host partitioned system. Landis para. 65.
08. The virtual partition monitors in each partition constrain the
guest OS and its applications to the assigned resources. Each
monitor implements a system call interface that is used by the
guest OS of its partition to request usage of allocated resources.
Landis para. 66.
09. The monitor is aware of processor capabilities so that it may be
optimized to utilize any available processor virtualization support.
Landis para. 67.
6
Appeal 2014-004897
Application 12/641,001
10. The monitor for the ultravisor partition is a lead' monitor with
two special roles. It creates and destroys monitor instances. It
also provides services to the created monitors to aid processor
context switches. During a processor context switch, monitors
save the guest partition state in the virtual processor structure,
save the privileged state in virtual processor structure and then
invoke the ultravisor monitor switch service. This service loads
the privileged state of the target partition monitor and switches to
the target partition monitor which then restores the remainder of
the guest partition state. Landis para. 68.
11. The monitor also maintains a map of resources allocated to the
partition it monitors and ensures that the guest OS (and
applications) in its partition use only the allocated hardware
resources. The monitor can do this since it is the first code
running in the partition at the processor's most privileged level.
The monitor boots the partition firmware at a decreased privilege.
The firmware subsequently boots the OS and applications.
Normal processor protection mechanisms prevent the firmware,
OS, and applications from ever obtaining the processor's most
privileged protection level. Landis para. 69.
12. The most privileged processor level (i.e., x86 ring 0) is retained
by having the monitor instance running below the system call
interface. This is most effective if the processor implements at
least three distinct protection levels: e.g., x86 ring 1, 2, and 3
available to the guest OS and applications. The ultravisor
partition connects to the monitors at the base (most privileged
7
Appeal 2014-004897
Application 12/641,001
level) of each partition. The monitor grants itself read only access
to the partition descriptor in the ultravisor partition, and the
ultravisor partition has read only access to one page of monitor
state stored in the resource database. Landis para. 71.
13. Multiple ultravisor partitions are also possible for large host
partitions to avoid a single point of failure. Each would be
responsible for resources of the appropriate portion of the host
system. Resource service allocations would be partitioned in each
portion of the host system. This allows clusters to run within a
host system (one cluster node in each zone) and still survive
failure of an ultravisor partition 14. Landis para. 77.
14. During bootstrap, the boot partition reserves almost all of
available memory and constructs the ultravisor partition and the
initial resource map in resource database with all memory
assigned either to the boot partition, the ultravisor partition, or the
available' partition. The boot partition initiates transactions to
the resource manager application until it has also booted the
command partition. At this point the ultravisor partition is
attached to the command partition and accepts only its command
transactions. Landis para. 101.
15. The ultravisor partition owns the memory that contains the
resource database that stores the resource allocation maps. This
includes the 'fractal' map for memory, the processor schedule, and
mapped I/O hardware devices. Lor PCI I/O hardware, this map
would allocate individual PCI devices, rather than require I/O
8
Appeal 2014-004897
Application 12/641,001
partitions to enumerate a PCI bus. Different devices on the sane
PCI bus can be assigned to different I/O partitions. An ultravisor
resource allocation application in the ultravisor partition tracks the
resources, applies transactions to the resource database, and is also
the server for the command and control channels. The ultravisor
resource allocation application runs in the ultravisor partition with
a minimal operating environment. Landis para. 105.
ANALYSIS
We are persuaded by Appellants’ argument that Landis fails to describe
setting priority rules for each of the plurality of partitions based on user
input where the priority rules indicate at least two levels of priority for being
able to unassign resources. App. Br. 14. Yasuda does not describe this
limitation and the Examiner does not find otherwise. The Examiner relies
on Landis for this. Final Act. 5.
The Examiner finds that Landis describes two types of partitions. One
level is an ultravisor partition that manages the remaining partitions and the
other type is that of the remaining partitions. The ultravisor process in its
partition has resources that are maintained as read only. The Examiner
concludes that the ultravisor partition has resources that cannot be
unassigned, whereas the remaining partitions have monitors that can be
halted. The problem the Examiner has is that Landis does not describe
resources assignable to all of its partitions that are unassignable in only its
ultravisor partition and that this distinction is based on priority rules set for
each of the plurality of partitions based on user input. The resources
9
Appeal 2014-004897
Application 12/641,001
Examiner cites as being unassignable cannot be assigned to partitions other
than the ultravisor partition, and to the extent the read only attributes are
rules, they are set by the operating system rather than user entered priority
rules.
Both independent claims have similar limitations.
CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
The rejection of claims 1 and 8 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Yasuda and Landis is improper.
The rejection of claims 2 and 3 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Yasuda, Landis, and Branda is improper.
The rejection of claims 5 and 6 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Yasuda, Landis, and Oshins is improper.
The rejection of claim 7 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over
Yasuda, Landis, Oshins, and Wein is improper.
The rejection of claim 9 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over
Yasuda, Landis, and Binns is improper.
DECISION
The rejections of claims 1—3 and 5—9 are reversed.
REVERSED
10