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Ex parte LOO et al. - Page 8
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Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences > 1997 > Ex parte LOO et al. - Page 8
Appeal No. 95-4714
Application No. 08/046,476
"kernel." As explained above, the role of the CPU in the2
flushing operation is limited to issuing a Flush command and
responding to a Bus Request signal by issuing a Bus Grant signal.
The claimed comparison function is performed by the circuitry
depicted in Figure 12, which provides Context Match, Page Match,
and Segment Match signals to the circuitry of Figure 11, which
issues a Flush Match signal when the requisite conditions have
been satisfied. Furthermore, the recitation that the kernel is
involved in the comparison and flushing functions contradicts
the "flush control logic means" paragraph, which specifies that
the flush control logic means maintains control of the address
bus from the time it receives a flush command from the central
processor until the cache block flush operation has been
2Because the specification does not provide a definition of
"kernel," it is given its broadest reasonable interpretation
consistent with appellants' disclosure. In re Zletz, 893 F.2d
319, 321, 13 USPQ2d 1320, 1322 (Fed. Cir. 1989). Neither
appellant nor the examiner has provided a definition of this
term. We note it is described as follows in A. Silberschatz & P.
Galvin, Operating System Concepts 5 (4th ed. 1994) (copy
enclosed): "There is . . . no universally accepted definition of
what is part of the operating system and what is not. . . .
[T]he operating system is the one program running at all times on
the computer (usually called the kernel), with all else being
applications programs" (emphasis in original).
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