Appeal No. 2006-0537 Page 6
Application No. 09/753,766
latency event, since it requires numerous cycles to resolve, and it is
‘one of the more serious impediments to realizing even higher
processor performance (Bondi column 1, lines 62-64).’ Parady has
taught that a thread switch occurs on a long latency event (see
above) and multi-threading reduces the impact of long latency
events (Parady column 1, lines 58-59). A person of ordinary skill in
the art would have recognized that a branch mispredict is a type of
long latency event and reducing the performance penalty due to the
misprediction would increase processor performance. Therefore, it
would have been obvious to modify Parady to switch threads on a
branch misprediction in order to reduce the performance penalty
suffered by the misprediction. The test of obviousness is not what
has been taught explicitly by each reference, as suggested by
Applicant’s arguments, but what the two references suggest to a
person of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made
(In re Bozek, 163 USPQ 545 (CCPA 1969) ‘The test for
obviousness is not whether the features of one reference may be
bodily incorporated into the other to produce the claimed subject
matter by simply what the combination of references makes
obvious to one of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.’; In re Van
Beckum, 169 USPQ 47 (CCPA 1971) ‘We would note that it is well
settled that the test of obviousness is not whether the features of
one reference can be bodily incorporated in to the structure of
another and proper inquiry should not be limited to the specific
structure shown by the references, but should be into the concepts
fairly contained therein, and the overriding question to be
determined is whether those concepts would suggest to one skilled
in the art the modifications called for by the claims.’, In re Sheckler,
168 USPQ 716 (CCPA 1971) ‘…It is, of course, not necessary that
either Barnes or Dryden actually suggest, expressly or in so many
words, the changes or possible improvements appellant has
made’).
As noted by the examiner, the teaching at column 4, lines 6 through 8 of
Parady indicates that his invention “could be added to other potentially long-
latency operations, such as jump instructions.” These jump instructions are
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