Appeal No. 2001-0048
Application No. 08/497,481
if the last task is not runnable or does not have a priority
equal to the highest priority task. Vaswani does not separately
determine whether the priority of a current task and the priority
of an affinity task are equal to the highest priority before
allocating the processor to the highest priority task. We
disagree with the Examiner’s characterization of the last task as
both the claimed current task and the affinity task (final
rejection, pages 1& 2) since Vaswani determines the priority of
the last task only once before moving on to executing the task
with the highest priority. Therefore, the last task may be
characterized as either the current task or the affinity task,
not both, whereas claim 1 requires first, the selection of the
current task having a priority equal to the highest priority,
otherwise, the selection of the affinity task having the same
priority as the highest priority.
Cochcroft, on the other hand is relied on by the Examiner
for teaching the selection of processors from a single run queue
(final rejection, page 2). However, Cochcroft fails to overcome
the above deficiencies of Vaswani with respect to claim 1.
Assuming, arguendo, that it would have been obvious to utilize
the single run queue of Cochcroft in Vaswani’s processor
scheduling method, as held by the Examiner, the combination of
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