Appeal No. 1999-0495
Application No. 08/752,729
For the initial claim 18 step of "identifying each instruction," the rejection points to
column 4, lines 49-61 of the reference. The section reveals that as each instruction is
fetched from the cache, a counter assigns strictly sequential ID values to each
instruction in the order fetched. A portion of the ID of a particular instruction may be
compared to the corresponding portion of the ID of another instruction. The
comparison provides the relative order of when the instructions were fetched from
memory, and thus an "age" comparison between instructions.
For the contested step of "reordering," the rejection points to column 7, lines 52-
65 of Popescu. The section describes an instruction scheduler.
Among the information about instructions examined by the instruction
scheduler to determine whether the instruction should be executed is the
locker information and instruction ID. From this information, the instruction
scheduler 33 picks the instructions most ready to run.... The instruction
scheduler picks the oldest runnable instructions for which there are
sufficient execution resources available.
In response to appellants' argument that the reordering is not "independent of
the identification of the instructions," the examiner points to further material at column
6, lines 48-67 of the reference and submits a rebuttal. (Answer at 5-6.) However, we
do not find that the examiner's response is sufficient to demonstrate that what appears
to be clear language in the patent, describing a process contrary to the clear language
of instant claim 18, in actuality meets the requirements of the claim.
That all the details of Popescu's process are not shown in the drawings is not
surprising; the written description of a disclosure is normally more detailed than the
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