Ex Parte Mathur et al

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Apr 18, 2019

14323955 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Apr. 18, 2019)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
14/323,955 07/03/2014
82474 7590 04/22/2019
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP (PH)(SanDisk)
1701 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103-2921
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Akshay Mathur
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
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
058752-01-5228-US 5695
EXAMINER
SAIN, GAUTAM
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2135
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
04/22/2019 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):
phpatentcorrespondence@morganlewis.com
judith.troilo@morganlewis.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte AKSHA Y MATHUR, DHARANI KOTTE,
CHAY AN BISWAS, BASKARAN KANNAN, and
SUMANT K. P ATRO
Appeal 2018-007 4 7 4
Application 14/323,955 1
Technology Center 2100
Before ALLEN R. MacDONALD, MICHAEL J. ENGLE, and
IFTIKHAR AHMED, Administrative Patent Judges.
AHMED, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a final rejection of
claims 1-23, which are all of the claims pending in the application. We
have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ).
We REVERSE.
Technology
The application relates to "using sub-region I/0 history to cache
repeatedly accessed sub-regions in a non-volatile storage device." Spec. ,r 2.
1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is SanDisk Technologies
LLC. App. Br. 4.
Appeal2018-007474
Application 14/323,955
Illustrative Claim
Claim 1 is illustrative and reproduced below with certain limitations at
issue emphasized:
1. A method, comprising:
rece1vmg, at a storage device, a plurality of
input/output (I/0) requests from a host, the plurality ofI/0
requests including read requests and write requests to be
performed in a plurality of regions in a logical address
space of the host; and
performing one or more operations for each region
of the plurality of regions in the logical address space of
the host, including:
for each sub-region of a plurality of sub-
regions of the region in the logical address space of
the host, wherein each sub-region includes two or
more pages and two or more logical block addresses
(LBAs):
determining, and storing in a data
structure in the storage device, a total number
of times the sub-region in the logical address
space of the host is accessed during a
predetermined time period;
in accordance with the determined
total number of times the sub-region is
accessed, determining whether the sub-
region in the logical address space of the
host is accessed more than a predetermined
threshold number of times during the
predetermined time period; and
in accordance with a determination
that the sub-region in the logical address
space of the host is accessed more than the
predetermined threshold number of times in
the predetermined time period, caching, from
a storage medium of the storage device to a
2
Appeal2018-007474
Application 14/323,955
App. Br. 22.
cache of the storage device, data from the
sub-region.
Rejections2
Claims 1-5, 7, 10-13, 15-19, and 21-23 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious over the combination of de la Iglesia (US
2010/0115206 Al; May 6, 2010, "Iglesia"), Akutsu (US 2013/0103978 Al;
Apr. 25, 2013), and Pruthi (US 8,473,680 Bl; June 25, 2013). Final Act. 4.
Claim 6 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious over the
combination of Iglesia, Akutsu, Pruthi, and Yang (US 2015/0212943 Al;
July 30, 2015). Final Act. 22.
Claim 8 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious over the
combination of Iglesia, Akutsu, Pruthi, and Loh (US 2014/0181458 Al;
June 26, 2014). Final Act. 22.
Claims 9, 14, and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious
over the combination of Iglesia, Akutsu, Pruthi, and Burton (US
2006/0265568 Al; Nov. 23, 2006). Final Act. 23.
ISSUE
Did the Examiner err in finding that Iglesia teaches or suggests a
"logical address space of the host," as recited in claim 1?
ANALYSIS
Independent claim 1 recites performing operations for regions in the
"logical address space of the host." The Examiner relies on Iglesia for
2 Our decision as to the § 103 rejection of claim 1 is determinative as to the
§ 103 rejections of all the claims. Therefore, except for our ultimate
decision, we do not discuss further herein claims 2-23.
3
Appeal2018-007474
Application 14/323,955
disclosure of this limitation, finding that "Iglesia discloses groups of blocks
are logically grouped together into highly clustered address regions/areas 40
according to the previously monitored read and write access patterns by one
or more clients 10." Ans. 22 (citing Iglesia ,r 53, Figs. 1-5). The Examiner
notes that "each address region has a particular starting block address and a
particular ending block address," thereby extending over a block address
range. Id. (citing Iglesia ,r,r 38-39, 49, 53, and citing Iglesia Fig. 5 as
showing "logically grouping blocks"). These block address ranges, the
Examiner concludes, "are interpreted as" the claimed regions in the logical
address space of the host. Id. The Examiner reasons that these address
regions are "clustered according to access pattern by clients 10 which is
equivalent to a host accessing storage using an address," and therefore this
disclosure meets the claimed "logical address space of the host" under the
broadest reasonable interpretation of the term. Id.
Appellants contend that Iglesia's storage device 20, shown in
Figures 1 and 3-5 of Iglesia, is "a stand-alone storage array," which is
viewed as a large contiguous range of blocks. App. Br. 14 (citing Iglesia
,r,r 19, 30). According to Appellants, "Iglesia's address regions are physical
address regions in storage device, ... not regions or sub-regions in a logical
address space of the host." Id. (citing Iglesia Figs. 4, 5). Appellants note
that the storage device shown in Figure 4 of Iglesia is actually labeled
"disk," and Figure 4 shows that "the address ranges for the prefetch groups
in Iglesia are physical storage addresses in [that] storage device." Id. at 15.
Appellants contend that this is further confirmed by Iglesia's reference to
"storage address regions." Id. ( citing Iglesia ,r 29). Appellants therefore
argue that the Examiner has not cited to any portion of Iglesia that teaches or
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Appeal2018-007474
Application 14/323,955
suggests operations that are performed "in the logical address space of the
host," as required by the claims of the present application. Id.
We agree with Appellants that the Examiner has not sufficiently
explained how Iglesia teaches or suggests a "logical address space of the
host." Although Iglesia teaches groups of blocks in a storage device that are
logically grouped together, and that each block has a starting block address
and an ending block address, there is no indication that these blocks relate to
the logical address space of the host. These blocks are clearly identified by
their physical addresses, as can be seen from Figures 4 and 5 of Iglesia. As
Iglesia makes clear, the storage device disclosed in Iglesia is "viewed as a
large contiguous range of blocks," and access operations to the device are
through physical addresses, expressed as a number of blocks:
The address is often expressed in terms of blocks (such as a read
of blocks 100-200) where storage device 20 is viewed as a large
contiguous range of blocks. The length of the storage device
access operation is similarly expressed as a number of blocks.
Thus, every read or write from client 10 to storage device 20 can
be viewed as affecting a block range ( from address to address
plus length).
Iglesia ,r 30 ( emphasis added).
Thus, Iglesia addresses and manages host access operations through
the physical addresses used by the storage system. Independent claim 1,
however, requires performing operations for region in "the logical address
space of the host," which is different from the physical address ranges of a
storage device. It is therefore not clear from the record before us that Iglesia
teaches or suggests a "logical address space of the host," as recited in claim
1. The Examiner does not rely on Akutsu or Pruthi as meeting this claim
limitation.
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Appeal2018-007474
Application 14/323,955
Accordingly, given the record before us, we do not sustain the
Examiner's rejection of independent claim 1.
DECISION
For the reasons above, we reverse the Examiner's decision rejecting
claims 1-23.
REVERSED
6