First a caveat. Chip-level engineering is not my area of expertise; I am a system-level engineer. Some might say I know enough to be dangerous. That aside, here are my thoughts and opinions regarding the comparison of the original Claim 29 and the amended Claim 29.

The majority of the amendments appear to address differentiating Claim 29 from both Pomerene and Sachs by introducing the definition for the "predetermined position" of the instruction for a branch operation as the "first location" of the instruction group. The original Claim 29 never refers to a "first position," but rather refers to the location as "predetermined from a boundary" of the instruction group.

Pomerene defines the location in a variable way, meaning to any other address and each time using a different set of data, i.e., not predetermined to be the first location of the instruction group. Similarly, Sachs does not disclose the branch instruction positioned only at the first location of an instruction group, or that the position is even predetermined. To set Claim 29 apart from these two prior art references, the amended language is added, differentiating the location for the branch operation instruction to be at the "first" position in the instruction group.

The primary questions now seem to be:

1. Does the amended definition "first" provide a broader or narrower definition for the location of the branch instruction?
2. What is the stronger, or preferred, method with regard to microprocessor design and performance within the industry at large?

If one assumes that the definition of original Claim 29 for the location of the operand or instruction: "at a predetermined position from a boundary of said instruction groups;" implied the "first" location in the instruction group then one could reasonable assume that no narrowing of the claim has occurred. However, this begs a question as to why the location was not originally defined that way. I have read references that the patent owner's goal is to define a claim as broadly as possible while still being specific enough to support the patent on a whole.

If by amending the location as the "first" location is not consistent with the original implied meaning of the claim, then one could consider this a narrowing of Claim 29. For this to be answered in the context of commercial viability, one needs to know how this type of narrowing relates to the industry's use of this technology. Put another way, if the amended "first" location is the industry-preferred method to achieve, say, highest performance, then it would appear that the amended language is to the advantage of the '584. But, if the industry-preferred method is to take advantage of alternate addressing methods for operands within instruction groups (Pomerene, for example) while not sacrificing performance, then this narrowing could be a serious blow to the '584, as the industry would have ways to circumvent the "first" language in the amended Claim 29.

Our original language of "predetermined position from a boundary of said instruction groups" when considered in conjunction with the Microloop reference, eliminates the need for a branch instruction to include address data for the location of the branch because the location is implied to be the beginning of the instruction group. Therefore, by amending the language in Claim 29 to specifically identify the location as the first location of the instruction group, we seem to be stating what is already implied by the reference to the Microloop, and we indeed intended the predetermined position to be the first position.

I state again that chip-level design is not my particular area of expertise, and my comments here are offered for consideration, comment and correction by others, especially those with more knowledge in this area and the chip industry on the whole. I look forward to others' thoughts and opinions.

There are also other added terms in the amended sections of Claim 29 that introduce what appear to be more definition, such as "literal" and "accessed", that I need to consider further to better understand their intent and affect on Claim 29.

Until then, my overall opinion on the "predetermined position" issue and the amended "first" language is that the Claim is more clearly defined, but not necessarily more narrow in scope. The overarching question, as I state above, is how does this impact our licensing position in the industry with regard to preferred implementation and alternate options? I do not have enough knowledge of the process as to how the industry (particularly the companies we are pursuing for licensing) implements this technology to offer any reasonably certain answer. But, I think my comments here are fairly close to the heart of the questions that need to be answered. Hopefully someone else here has that knowledge.

Cheers for now,

DG