Appeal No. 1999-2747
Application 08/757,979
Invalid bit in the MESI field of a cache line in the storage
array.
Appellants then argue that the Examiner's citation of6
Handy to teach that the MESI cache protocol is a common
protocol and its use would have been obvious to one of
ordinary skill in this art, is merely an unsupported opinion
of the Examiner and is without objective support. Appellants
assert that the present invention utilizes the MESI protocol
in a unique manner heretofore not known.
In his Answer, the Examiner finds that Lefsky discloses a7
high availability set associative cache whereby defective
portions of the cache are identified at a granularity of the
cell level during cache operation, and a flag in the form of a
force bit is set to indicate the defective cell(s). The cells
which are flagged defective are mapped out and allow the
remainder of the cache to function despite the presence of
defective cell(s).
Turning to McClure, the Examiner posits that this
6Brief, pages 5-7.
7Answer, pages 5 and 8.
7
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