for some response to the Claim Construction minutes so kindly offered and provided by our friend Wolfpackvoltare. Well, I'll provide one with the BIG caveat that I am not technically astute, amd not an EE, but I do have a brain (and a heart, and some level of courage, Oh My! LOL).

I'll hit on two things, and what MY response would have been if I were Cook and had the opportunity to speak.

First, the "varying together" thing. As I have posted previously, this to me is a no-brainer and pretty straight forward. What I would have added in response to the Judge's anology (he and his wife walking together, differences in stride requiring the wife to walk faster to keep up) is that this is a discussion of proportion. Yes, when you walk with your wife, she has to take more steps to keep up, AND when there are environmental changes your respective number of steps will alter in proportion; you will speed up together or slow down together. Taking the anology, if you and your wife were suddenly burdenned with a proportionately weighted backpack, you would slow together but stay side by side. In this context, the backpack or burden would be added system requirements - performing many actions as opposed to few or none. Likewise, using the anology, if the temperature of your operating environment would change, like adding 20 degrees, you and your wife would respond by slowing your walking speed at presumably the same rate. Thus, whether you and your wife, or two integrated components mounted on the same substrate, are burdenned by additional workload or operating temperature OR when such burdens are relieved, your response action will "vary together" to enable you to continue to walk side by side. The question then becomes whether walking side by side offers the greatest performance efficiency. Here, the proof is in the pudding, as virtually all known high performance chips adopt this methodology.

That's what I would have said....

As for the "groupedness" and what constitutes a "group" (which I suspect is in regard to "multiple instruction fetch"), I would have clarified that what we are talking about here is a "capability", and not a performance requirement. The relevant patent enables the capability to perform multiple instruction fetch when required. If such is not required, the capability is not exercised, and the issue of "groupedness" becomes moot (i.e., what about the word "multiple" don't you understand?). This, as an issue, is equivalent to suggesting that there is something wrong with this particular patent because it doesn't come into play when the computer is turned off. It has to do with system demands and an inherent capability to respond.

There's my two cents and what I would have said had I been Cook and assuming I'm correct in the context of these terminology debates.

Why didn't Cook respond in this fashion? Perhaps he didn't have a "clean" opportunity to speak. Perhaps he feared his words may conflict with previously provided written input, or the patent language itself. Or perhaps he isn't as clever as me! LOL (not bloody likely!). I'll go with the fear of conflict excuse (though one may expect him to be adequately cognizant to avoid conflict).

Well, you asked for it..... Hope you are not sorry you did!

'Cuz I KNOW nuttin'!

SGE