Ex Parte Detlefs et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardApr 28, 201712400209 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 28, 2017) 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. 12/400,209 03/09/2009 David L. Detlefs 324898.01 3623 69316 7590 05/02/2017 MICROSOFT CORPORATION ONE MICROSOFT WAY REDMOND, WA 98052 EXAMINER BROPHY, MATTHEW J ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2191 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 05/02/2017 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): u sdocket @ micro soft .com chriochs @microsoft.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte DAVID L. DETLEFS, YOSSEFF LEVANONI, WEIRONG ZHU, DANA GROFF, and ALEXANDER DADIOMOV Appeal 2017-002642 Application 12/400,209 Technology Center 2100 Before JAMES R. HUGHES, JOHN P. PINKERTON, and STEVEN M. AMUNDSON, Administrative Patent Judges. HUGHES, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the Examiner’s final decision rejecting claims 1, 3—14, and 16—20. Claims 2 and 15 have been canceled. Final Act. 1—2; App. Br. I.1 We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. 1 We refer to Appellants’ Specification (“Spec.”), filed Mar. 9, 2009; Appeal Brief (“App. Br.”) filed Apr. 8, 2016; and Reply Brief (“Reply Br.”) filed Dec. 5, 2016. We also refer to the Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.”) mailed Oct. 5, 2016, and Final Office Action (Final Rejection) (“Final Act.”) mailed Oct. 7, 2015. Appeal 2017-002642 Application 12/400,209 Appellants ’ Invention The invention generally concerns privatization artifacts, software transactional memory (STM) systems, computer readable storage devices, and methods utilized by an STM system for ensuring that a privatization artifact will not occur. A privatization artifact occurs between a first transaction associated with a first thread and a subsequent second transaction due to access of an object by the first thread after the second transaction (access and modification of the object during the second transaction) and after the object has been privatized by the first thread. The method ensures against the privatization artifact by determining that a first transaction is not a damaging transaction (a transaction that would perform a damaging write) to a privatized object and thereby create a privatization artifact. Spec. 1— 3, 5, 32—36; Abstract. Representative Claim Independent claim 1, reproduced below with key disputed limitations emphasized, further illustrates the invention: 1. A method performed by a software transactional memory (STM) system in a computer system, the method comprising: ensuring that a privatization artifact will not occur between a first transaction in a first thread and a second transaction that is later than the first transaction in a completion order, the privatization artifact would have occurred from access of an object by the first thread after the second transaction accesses and modifies the object after the object has been privatized by the first thread including: determining that the first transaction is not a damaging transaction that would perform a damaging write to a privatized object and thereby create a privatization artifact to ensure that the privatization artifact will not occur, and 2 Appeal 2017-002642 Application 12/400,209 allowing the second transaction to complete prior to the first transaction completing. Rejections on Appeal 1. The Examiner rejects claims 1, 3—5, 7—11, 13, 14, 16—18, and 20 under pre-America Invents Act (AIA) 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Adl-Tabatabai et al. (US 2010/0162250 Al, published June 24, 2010 (filed Dec. 24, 2008)) (“Adl-Tabatabai”); Spear et al., Privatization Techniques for Software Transactional Memory, 338—339, Proc. of the 26th annual ACM symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC ‘07) (2007) (“Spear-Privatization”); and Spear et al., RingSTM: Scalable Transactions with a Single Atomic Instruction, Proc. of the 20th annual ACM symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA ‘08) (2008) (“Spear-RingSTM”). 2. The Examiner rejects claims 6, 12, and 19 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Adl-Tabatabai, Spear-Privatization, Spear-RingSTM, and Ni et al., Design and implementation of transactional constructs for C/C++, 195—212, Proc. of the 23rd ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-Oriented Programming Systems Languages and Applications (OOPSLA ‘08) (2008) (“Ni”). ISSUES Based upon our review of the record, Appellants’ contentions, and the Examiner’s findings and conclusions, the issue before us follows: 1. Did the Examiner err in finding that Adl-Tabatabai, Spear- Privatization, and Spear-RingSTM collectively would have taught or suggested “determining that the first transaction is not a damaging 3 Appeal 2017-002642 Application 12/400,209 transaction that would perform a damaging write to a privatized object and thereby create a privatization artifact to ensure that the privatization artifact will not occur” within the meaning of Appellants’ claim 1 and the commensurate limitations of claims 8 and 14? ANALYSIS Appellants argue independent claims 1 and 14 together as a group. See App. Br. 5—10. Appellants do not separately argue dependent claims 3— 5, 7, 9-11, 13, 16—18, and 20. See App. Br. 10. Appellants provide additional separate arguments with respect to independent claim 8. See App. Br. 9-10. We select independent claim 1 as representative of Appellants’ arguments and grouping with respect to claims 1, 3—5, 7—11, 13, 14, 16—18, and 20. 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv). We also address Appellants’ separate arguments with respect to claim 8. We adopt as our own (1) the findings and reasons set forth by the Examiner in the action from which this appeal is taken (see Final Act. 2—14; see also Ans. 2—14), and (2) the reasons set forth by the Examiner in the Examiner’s Answer (see Ans. 26—32) in response to Appellants’ Appeal Brief. We concur with the findings and conclusions reached by the Examiner, and we provide the following for emphasis. Appellants contend that Adl-Tabatabai, Spear-Privatization, and Spear-RingSTM do not teach the disputed features of claim 1. See App. Br. 6—10; Reply Br. 2—5. Specifically, Appellants contend Spear-RingSTM does not teach “determining that the first transaction is not a damaging transaction that would perform a damaging write to a privatized object and thereby create a privatization artifact” (App. Br. 7 (quoting claim 1) 4 Appeal 2017-002642 Application 12/400,209 (emphasis omitted); see App. Br. 6—7; Reply Br. 3). Appellants also contend Spear-Privatization does not teach ensuring that a privatization artifact will not occur between a first transaction in a first thread and a second transaction that is later than the first transaction in a completion order, the privatization artifact would have occurred from access of an object by the first thread after the second transaction accesses and modifies the object after the object has been privatized by the first thread. App. Br. 7 (quoting claim 1) (emphasis omitted); see App. Br. 7—9; Reply Br. 2—3. Further, Appellants contend Spear-Privatization does not teach determining a first completion order of a first transaction in a first thread and a second transaction in a second thread executed by a STM system, and implementing a second completion order of the first and the second transactions that differs from the first completion order in response to determining that a privatization artifact will not occur between the first and the second transactions, the privatization artifact would have occurred from access of an object by one of the first and second threads after one of the first and second transactions accesses and modifies the object after the object has been privatized by the one of the first and second threads as defined by independent claim 8. App. Br. 10 (quoting claim 1) (emphasis omitted); see App. Br. 9—10; Reply Br. 3^4. The Examiner makes specific findings with respect to each of the disputed limitations in Appellants’ claim 1. See Final Act. 2—8; Ans. 27—32. We agree with the Examiner and find a preponderance of the evidence demonstrates that the combination of Adl-Tabatabai, Spear-Privatization, and Spear-RingSTM would have taught or at least suggested the disputed features of Appellants’ claim 1. Appellants do not directly dispute the Examiner’s findings with respect to the teachings of Adl-Tabatabai, Spear- Privatization, and Spear-RingSTM as they apply to the proffered 5 Appeal 2017-002642 Application 12/400,209 combination. Instead, Appellants quote the disputed limitations, state that the individual references do not teach certain aspects of the quoted limitation, and then summarize or quote the relevant portions of the individual references. See App. Br. 7—9. In each case, Appellants do not address the Examiner’s specific findings with respect to the teachings of the prior art. Appellants first contend that Spear-RingSTM does not teach “determining that the first transaction is not a damaging transaction that would perform a damaging write to a privatized object and thereby create a privatization artifact” (claim 1). See App. Br. 6—7; Reply Br. 3. We agree with the Examiner that Adl-Tabatabai and Spear-RingSTM describe determining that the first transaction is not a damaging transaction — that a transaction does not write to a privatized object. See Final Act. 3—5, 7—8; Ans. 27—28 (citing Adl-Tabatabai Tflf 19-26, 55—56, 76; Fig. 3; and Spear- RingSTM Secs. 1.3, 2, 2.2). As explained by the Examiner, Adl-Tabatabai describes determining a potentially conflicting access that would produce a privatization artifact. Ans. 27. The Examiner further explains that Spear- RingSTM describes checking intersections between read/write sets for transactions to determine if a transaction will create a data violation (i.e., “would be [a] ‘damaging transaction[]’”). Ans. 27. Appellants do not explicitly address the Examiner’s findings, nor do they persuasively rebut these findings. Appellants next contend that Spear-Privatization does not teach the recited ensuring functionality — “ensuring that a privatization artifact will not occur ...” (claim 1) — or the recited completion order (a second transaction that is later than a first transaction in a completion order, and 6 Appeal 2017-002642 Application 12/400,209 avoiding a second transaction modifying an object after the object has been privatized by the first thread (the first transaction)). See App. Br. 7—9; Reply Br. 2—3. We again agree with the Examiner that Adl-Tabatabai and Spear- Privatization describe the recited functionality and completion order. See Final Act. 3—7; Ans. 27, 31—32 (citing Adl-Tabatabai Tflf 19-26, 55—56, 76; Fig. 3; and Spear-Privatization Sec. 3.2). As explained by the Examiner, Adl-Tabatabai describes determining a potentially conflicting access and holding a potentially conflicting transaction (implementing a safety mechanism) allowing transactions to complete out of their original order, e.g., allowing a second transaction to complete before privatizing an object (first transaction). Final Act. 4—5; Ans. 27. The Examiner further explains that Spear-Privatization explicitly describes a transaction execution scenario to be prevented or avoided where an object is privatized (thread T1 privatizes an object in a first transaction) and a second thread T2 executes a transaction on the privatized object. See Final Act. 5—6; Ans. 31—32; Spear- Privatization Sec 3.2. Appellants do not explicitly address the Examiner’s findings, nor do they persuasively rebut these findings. Appellants further contend, with respect to independent claim 8, that Adl-Tabatabai and Spear-Privatization do not teach the recited first and second completion orders — “determining a first completion order of a first transaction in a first thread and a second transaction in a second thread” and “implementing a second completion order of the first and the second transactions that differs from the first completion order in response to determining that a privatization artifact will not occur” (claim 8). See App. Br. 9—10; Reply Br. 3^4. We agree with the Examiner that Adl-Tabatabai and Spear-Privatization describe the recited first and second threads, first 7 Appeal 2017-002642 Application 12/400,209 and second transactions, and first and second completion orders. See Final Act. 8—14; Ans. 27, 31—32 (citing Adl-Tabatabai Tflf 19-26, 55—57, 61; Fig. 3; and Spear-Privatization Sec. 3.2). As explained by the Examiner, Adl- Tabatabai describes first and second threads, first and second transactions, first and second completion orders, as well as determining a potentially conflicting access and holding a potentially conflicting transaction (implementing a safety mechanism) allowing transactions to complete out of their original order. Final Act. 8—11; Ans. 27. The Examiner further explains that Spear-Privatization explicitly describes a transaction execution scenario to be prevented where an object is privatized (thread T1 privatizes an object in a first transaction) and a second thread T2 executes a transaction on the privatized object. See Final Act. 11—12; Ans. 31—32; Spear- Privatization, Sec 3.2. Appellants do not explicitly address the Examiner’s findings, nor do they persuasively rebut these findings. Thus, Appellants do not persuade us of error in the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of claim 1. For these same reasons, Appellants also do not persuade us of error in the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of independent claims 8 (including the additional limitations of claim 8, discussed supra) and 14, or dependent claims 3—5, 9-11, 13, 16—18, and 20, not separately argued with particularity {supra). Accordingly, we affirm the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of claims 1, 3—5, 7—11, 13, 14, 16—18, and 20. With respect to the obviousness rejection of dependent claims 6, 12, and 19, rejected as obvious over Adl-Tabatabai, Spear-Privatization, Spear- RingSTM, and Ni, we agree with the Examiner’s findings and conclusions for the same reasons set forth with respect to claim 1 {supra). Appellants do 8 Appeal 2017-002642 Application 12/400,209 not separately argue the rejections of these claims with particularity. App. Br. 11. CONCLUSIONS Appellants have not shown that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1, 3-14, and 16-20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). DECISION We affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 3—14, and 16—20. No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l)(iv). AFFIRMED 9 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation