Appeal No. 2004-1608
Application 09/752,873
connect the sense amplifiers to each of the ways of Brauer as
claimed.
With respect to separately argued claim 12, appellant
argues that the examiner fails to address the recitations of
claim 12 at all [brief, page 6]. The examiner responds that
appellant does not identify a particular feature of claim 12, but
the examiner points to the hit signals of Brauer [answer, page
7]. Appellant responds that the examiner has failed to meet his
initial burden of presenting a prima facie case of obviousness.
Appellant asserts that the examiner has failed to identify how
the steps of providing data and generating the hit signal occur
at the same time [reply brief, page 3].
We will sustain the examiner’s rejection of claim 12.
Although the examiner did not specifically point out where in the
applied prior art the claimed feature is taught, we find that the
feature recited in claim 12 is taught by Brauer. Specifically,
Brauer teaches that each of the four data arrays couples its
selected cache line to its bitlines, and simultaneously, the four
tag arrays output four tags to the comparators [column 4, lines
15-20]. We find that this teaching suggests that the steps of
providing data and generating a hit signal occur at the same time
in Brauer.
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