Appeal No. 2002-2086
Application 09/010,396
(pages referred to as "EA__") for a statement of the examiner's
rejection, and to the brief (Paper No. 18) (pages referred to as
"Br__") for a statement of appellants' arguments thereagainst.
OPINION
Note
It appears that the upper bound on the summation in
equation (9) (specification, p. 8) should be "k" instead of "i".
Group 1 - claims 1, 6-8, 12, 18, and 22
The issue is whether Li discloses or suggests "calculating
an interconnect delay, defined as a delay for an interconnect
between a driver and a sink in a placement of cells; ... wherein
the interconnect is part of a net, and wherein calculation of the
interconnect delay comprises determining a first delay that
accounts for a contribution of a direct path between the driver
and the sink and determining a second delay that accounts for a
contribution of a portion of the net that does not include the
direct path to the interconnect delay" (claim 1). Independent
claims 5, 12, and 18 have a similar limitation.
The examiner relies on the following statements in Li:
Once the overall length of the nets coupled to a
segment has been estimated, the delay through each critical
path is calculated by summing the delays for the individual
segments making up each critical path. [Col. 10, line 66 to
col. 11, line 2.]
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