Appeal No. 1997-0562
Application No. 08/255,130
Appellants argue that Guenthner does not teach or suggest the nonsequential
execution of scalar instructions. (See brief at pages 8-9.) We agree with appellants.
While there is some inherent order required in Guenthner to maintain proper order in the
results, the operation thereof is generally sequential in nature wherein the distributor
dispatches the instructions in sequence to the various processing units which process
these instructions in the order which they are received. We find no need in Guenthner for
maintaining a separate completion buffer for maintaining indications of completion of
nonsequential instructions. The examiner maintains that various units in Guenthner teach
the claimed “maintaining an indication of completion of execution of each of said
dispatched scalar instructions in a separate completion buffer; and controlling the
transferring of results of execution” limitations based upon the fact the stored results would
provide the needed indication of completion. (See answer at pages 4 and 7.) While we
generally agree that the fact that the results are present in the results stack would be an
indication of the completion of a respective instruction, in our view, this does not fairly
suggest to skilled artisans the use of the claimed separate completion buffer to facilitate
transfer of results “to selected general purpose registers in
6
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007