Appeal No. 97-0266
Application No. 08/176,370
"[t]his statement in Tran clearly states that an instruction
is 'dispatched' to the functional unit for immediate
processing."
The portion of Tran relied upon by the examiner
(particularly column 1, lines 18-19) refers to "the dispatched
instruction to the reservation station." On the other hand,
claim 1 reads, "dispatch of the dependent instruction to an
execution unit" and claims 20 and 35 (the only other
independent claims) read, "at least one row is ready for
dispatch to an execution unit." Therefore, Tran clearly uses
the term "dispatch" to connote sending to the reservation
station, whereas the claims employ the term for sending to an
execution unit.
However, Tran's different usage of the term "dispatch"
does not necessarily mean that Tran fails to perform
appellants' dispatching step. In fact, Tran states (column 2,
lines 44-46) that "instructions are either being executed or
waiting in a reservation station to be executed." Thus, Tran
implies that the instructions are sent to the execution units
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