Appeal 2006-3434
Application 10/687,907
of obviousness double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-16 of
Hannum, we therefore affirm pro forma the double patenting rejection of
claims 1-3, 6-13 and 16-18.
Next, we find that Miller teaches the invention as recited in
representative claim 1. We note that, at initialization, Miller populates the
ACAM with invalid states while the claimed invention populates the cache
with illegal values. We also note that both Miller and the claimed invention
populate their respective tables as indicated for the purpose of preventing a
possible match between such values and prospective value entries.
Additionally, we note that both the illegal values used in the claimed
invention and Miller’s invalid states are obtained at initialization (i.e. not
obtained during the normal course of program execution). Therefore, we are
persuaded by the weight of the evidence before us that Miller’s teaching of
populating the ACAM with illegal states, at initialization, teaches
Appellants’ claim limitation of populating of the associative table with
illegal values. Thus, after considering the entire record before us, we find
that the Examiner did not err in rejecting claims 1, 2, 7, 8, 10 through 12 and
17 through 19 as being anticipated by Miller.
Next, we find that that the Examiner properly found the motivation in
the references themselves to combine the disclosures of Miller and Geva or
Hale to yield the invention, as recited in claims 3, 6, 9, 13, and 16. We note
in the findings of fact above that Geva teaches an advanced load address
table (ALAT) that interacts with an advance load or advance load check that
causes a processor to perform a load from a memory location. Particularly,
Geva suggests that such an approach can be used to invalidate overlapping
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