Intercomputer communications based on message broadcasting with receiver selection
First Claim
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1. An apparatus for intercomputer communication, comprising:
- a common broadcast bus for carrying data messages, each data message prefixed by an n-bit content tag wherein said content tag identifies the information content of each particular data message;
a plurality of computing elements operably connected to said common bus; and
,a plurality of message filters, each one of said message filters connected to said common broadcast bus and paired with a particular computing element, wherein each one of said message filters is responsive to a set of content tags for alerting said particular computing element to receive a data message appearing over said common data bus if and only if the content tag of the data message is within the set of content tags associated with said particular message filter.
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Abstract
An apparatus and method of intercomputer communications based on message broadcast with receiver selection is taught. A distributed computer system is described in which each computing element includes a hardware message filter which provides content tag recognition and selection. The overall system architecture allows software modularity and both hardware and software extensibility. The message filter can be preset or dynamically programmed, and can be operated in conjunction with a serial or parallel broadcast bus.
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17 Claims
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1. An apparatus for intercomputer communication, comprising:
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a common broadcast bus for carrying data messages, each data message prefixed by an n-bit content tag wherein said content tag identifies the information content of each particular data message; a plurality of computing elements operably connected to said common bus; and
,a plurality of message filters, each one of said message filters connected to said common broadcast bus and paired with a particular computing element, wherein each one of said message filters is responsive to a set of content tags for alerting said particular computing element to receive a data message appearing over said common data bus if and only if the content tag of the data message is within the set of content tags associated with said particular message filter. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12)
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13. A method of intercomputer communication based on message broadcasting with receiver selection, comprising the steps of:
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transmit over a common broadcast bus an n-bit content tag which describes the content of a data message; each computing element containing a message filter which performs the following steps, read the n-bit content tag appearing over the common broadcast bus, address a memory unit with the n-bit content tag, the memory unit contains a value stored in each memory location addressed by a content tag, said stored value indicates the set of relevant data messages for the computing element, read the value stored in the addressed memory location, flag the computing element when relevant content tags are received. - View Dependent Claims (14, 15, 16, 17)
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Specification