Appeal No. 96-3200 Page 6
Application No. 08/337,196
is nothing in any of the applied references suggesting that a
user may designate an order in which the program counters are
to be selected and for this reason, alone, we would reverse the
rejection of claim 12, and of claims 13 through 21 dependent
thereon, under 35 U.S.C. 103.
We find nothing in Watson suggestive of a processing unit
selecting one of a number of orders in which program counters
are selected. In Watson, the system determines the order in
which the virtual processors use the ALU. That order appears
to be limited to a single order. There is no predetermined
plurality of orders as in the instant claimed invention. The
examiner is aware of this and turns to Lee.
While the examiner relies on Lee for a teaching of a
predetermined plurality of schedules available for various
tasks, we agree with appellants that Lee “assigns a single task
to a number of processors, an operation quite distinct from
that of the present invention” [brief-page 7]. Thus, a single
task of a single program is executed by using a plurality of
processors in Lee. As observed by appellants, the schedulers
of Lee “cannot momentarily change the order in which a number
of programs are executed...” [brief-page 8]. Thus, we do not
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007