At&t Bell Laboratories

George F MacLachlan

Martin J Welt

John F McDonald

Glenn R Babecki

John D Palframan

Hueichi R Liu

Frank Kaplan

Gregory S Yates

Timothy A Wendt

Carlos Escolar

Paul M Zislis

Peter J Matteo

Craig M Garnant

Roger T Tran

Hsin-Kuo Kan

A geographically distributed multiprocessor system is implemented by locating groups of processors at nodes which are interconnected by way of a transport network and which are connected by way of local lines to customer terminals and hosts. Each processor supports a plurality of processes including certain process executing programs 'customized' for the customers and other processes executing programs having 'universal capabilities' which serve common needs of a plurality of customers. Processes communicate with other processes in the same processor by way of internal links and with other processes in other processors by way of combinations of internal links and external communication links. Interface processes exchange data between the internal and external links. A process can initiate a call to any other process and define the communication parameters for exchanging data information by selecting the appropriate internal link and supplying the code defining the communication parameters to the selected internal link.

Geographically distributed multiprocessor time-shared communication

A geographically distributed multiprocessor system is implemented by locating groups of processors at nodes which are interconnected by way of a transport network and which are connected by way of local lines to customer terminals and hosts. Each processor supports a plurality of processes which communicate with other processes in the same processor by way of internal links and with other processes in other processors by way of combinations of internal links and external communication links. Interface processes exchange data between the internal and external links. A process can initiate a call to any other process and define the communication parameters for exchanging data information by selecting the appropriate internal link and supplying the code defining the communication parameters to the selected internal link. The interface process relays the communication parameter code to the external link when the terminating end process is in the remote processor and processes the code when the terminating end process is the interface process.

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Tinton Falls, NJ, United States of America

George F MacLachlan