Appeal 2006-0016
Application 10/347,536
node controller selectively blocks colliding transactions. . . ." (Specification
56: 19-21.)
For their part, the Appellants now allege that three parts of the
Specification support the added limitations. First, they allege that "support
for Applicants' claims can be found in the specification on page 61, line 24,
through page 62, line 19. Applicants describe a processor blocking its
ordinary responses by providing modified responses instead." (Br. 5.)
Although this part of the specification explains that "the processors in a
distributed, multi-bus, multiprocessor system are required to abstain from
going critical upon receiving a RemStat AResp signal for their own Reads,"
(Specification 61: 12-15), it does not mention "blocking," let alone blocking
performed by the processors.
Second, the Appellants allege that according to "specification page 60,
line 32, through page 61, line 2," (Br. 5), "if the processor has a copy of the
cache line in a Shared state and has an outstanding Read transaction, the
processor must produce a 'Shared AResp', not a 'Retry'. A 'Retry' is also
blocked by the processor in this situation." (Id.) Although this part of the
specification explains that "a colliding snooped Read transaction was
blocked from a processor," (Specification 60: 26-27 (emphasis added)), it
does not mention what element actually blocks the transaction from reaching
the processor. Step 1318 of the Appellants' Figure 13, however, discloses
that it is the "[n]ode controller [that] blocks snooped Read transactions from
the processor. . . ."
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