Hitachi, Ltd.

University of California

Hitachi Microcomputer System, Ltd.

Hirokazu Kasashima

Kinji Mori

Katsumi Kawano

Masayuki Orimo

Yasuo Suzuki

Kozo Nakai

Minoru Koizumi

Tsutomu Yamada

Noritaka Matsumoto

Hiromichi Endoh

Setsuo Kawakami

Shoji Suzuki

Masahiko Saito

Tetsuaki Nakamikawa

Hiroyuki Ogura

Manabu Yamauchi

Toshihiko Sekizawa

Isao Wachi

Shinji Hori

Hiroaki Nakanishi

Masakazu Okada

Takayuki Morioka

Hideyuki Hara

Keiji Oshima

Manabu Shinomoto

Tsunao Kanzaki

Ryoichi Takamatsu

Toshio Endo

Minoru Koizumo

K H Kim

Toshihisa Oka

The invention contemplates to improve versatility or flexibility of a system for managing a controller. In a data format converter, a computer constitutes reception unit for acquiring input information containing a program, etc, of a first data format and outputted from a programmer unit, direction extract unit for extracting a convert direction of a data format contained in the input information so acquired, data conversion rule acquisition unit for acquiring a conversion rule of a data format corresponding to the convert direction so extracted and convert execution means for converting the program, etc, of the first data format to a second data format. The program, etc, of the second data format converted is outputted to the controller. The program, etc, can be created in this way in an arbitrary data format different from the data format of the controller.

Data format conversion method and equipment, and controller management system using data format conversion equipment

A modular computer system formed by connecting a processing module having a processor mounted thereon and a plurality of I/O modules in a stacked form via connectors, where differing ones of the plurality of I/O modules being differing types of I/O modules from one another, which operate with mutually differing types of bus-layout configurations. In accordance with the association of I/O modules with identification information, for each differing type of I/O module stacked via the connectors, said processing module selects from differing preset bus-layout configurations and device drivers from a memory, to dynamically reconfigure the reconfigurable generic bus for accessing the differing type of I/O module.

Modular computer system and I/O module

Without being restrained to a specific bus scheme, kinds of I/O modules connected to a processing module can be discriminated. Module exclusive selection parts respectively provided in I/O modules connected in a stacked form to a processing module via connectors judge only a module select signal input from terminals in the same position on processing module side connectors to be active. Based thereon, identification information of its own I/O module is output to a predetermined terminal on the connector. Without being restrained to a specific bus scheme, therefore, the processing module can acquire identification information of the I/O modules from a predetermined terminal on a connector. One I/O module can be selected by a simple module selection circuit scheme of inputting module select signals successively output from the processing module to terminals in the same position on processing module side connectors according to the connection order of the I/O modules.

According to the present invention, a file recovery system is provided in which the commands for recovering files such as a historical file are unnecessitated and the recovery system configuration is independent of the host processing system. That is, since the equipment for achieving a file recovery does not have information about the location of the recovery data, information about the content of a file to be recovered is transmitted to a transmission line. The other equipments asynchronously receive the information and judges whether or not a file containing the same content exists in the own system. If its file exists, the content of the file is transmitted to the transmission line. The equipment achieving the file recovery asynchronously receives from the transmission line the file data of files such as a historical file and establishes data consistency by use of the buffered current data and the event number, thereby recovering files such as a historical file.

Method and apparatus for recovering data for a file in a plurality of equipments

A management table is provided in each processor so as to manage the quality of data which is transferred via a common transmission medium which is connected to the processors, and when each processor sends data, it refers to the management table and sends the data to the common transmission medium by adding the attribute information indicating the quality of the data to it, and when each processor receives data, it refers to the management table and decides whether or not to let the program module receive the data on the basis of the attribute information added to the data, so that the flow of information in a distributed system can be managed autonomously for each attribute thereof, and information of an attribute is prevented from flowing into a specific group, and a plurality of attribute informations are integrated to one, and the protection of attributes among different kinds of applications and the connection processing are available.

Distributed computer system and method using a common transmission line

Attribute information of programs developed by processors in a distributed processing system include I/O data for defining I/O operation of the programs, which is given in a program description form. A correlation of the programs is checked based on the content of the attribute information. Program generation information, program content information and program modification information are added to the sharedly developed programs and they are updated in the course of development.

Method for managing programs with attribute information and developing

A method for organizing and programming distributed computer systems in which processors are connected via interconnection or communication networks, such that even if many cases of hardware and software faults occur within the processors or within the networks, such faults do not lead to the failures in the application's computation. Parallel and asynchronous execution of multiple versions of a program module is performed with processors which are connected by a network without involving any direct interaction between the processors during the execution of the same or different versions of the program module. The process includes a step for executing, for each of the distributed program modules, the primary version and its backup version concurrently by use of multiple processors, a step for checking, in each processor, the logical acceptability of the output data produced from its execution of a program module version, a step for sending, in each processor, the acceptable output data to the transmission paths, a step for receiving, in each processor, the message from the transmission paths, checking the logical acceptability of each received message, and detecting the messages belonging to the same program module, and a step for selecting, in each processor, a message based on a selection logic.

Method for distributed redundant execution of program modules

In a software distributedly preparing method for preparing a plurality of program modules combined by exchange of message data, in generating software modules and message data, repetition or similarity in the defined contents of the message data and multiple definition of a data item constituting the message data, and the defined contents of the message data are unified or separated to assure its consistency and preparing it as a data base which will be used in preparing a software module.

Method for producing program modules

A program processing method in a distributed processing system including a shared transmission medium and a plurality of processors connected thereto in which a sequence of processing is executed by the processors in a distributed manner and programs for executing the sequence of processing are respectively stored in the processors. Each processor executed, when information necessary for an execution of a program stored therein is arranged, the program with the arranged information set as input information and then transmits information resultant from the execution to the shared transmission medium. When storing a new program described conforming to a predetermined program, the processor detects program codes respectively of input and output instruction parts of the program to rearranged the parts such that the program codes respectively of the input and output instruction parts are located at positions in the program respectively before and after other processing part. When information necessary for an execution of the program is prepared, the processor executes the input and output instruction parts respectively before and after the other processing.

Program processing method and apparatus for producing a data flow type

A distributed processing method and system including a plurality of processors connected via a transmission path, in which a function is provided to an arbitrary processor to receive information and data passing through the transmission path and to obtain the received data based on information indicating input/output relationships between modules corresponding to the association of processing between the modules. When required, necessary portions of the obtained information and logging results are extracted, so that not only the time series data log but also the information or data log can be collected corresponding to the flow of a sequence of processing by establishing a display or print-out module. Furthermore, when data is received from an external device, the system generates a message having information indicating the order of the data and the content code representing content of the data and sends the message to the transmission path. A processor receives messages from the transmission path, and stores the data in accordance with each content code in an order which facilitates trouble shooting of the system.

Distributed processing system and method for job execution using a

In a distributed processing system wherein a plurality of processors are connected through a network and wherein programs are transmitted among the processors; each of the processors monitors the status of a program in the processor or the load status of any other of the processors as indicated by a message on the network. Upon performance of a judgement operator, the processor broadcasts a message indicative of the status of the processor or a program with a content indicating code affixed thereto, to another network, and the processor having received the message broadcasts a program existent in the other processor to the network along with the code indicative of the content of the program. The broadcast is performed in the other processor in accordance with the load statuses of the processors, and upon judging the content of the received message. Each processor judges whether or not the program being broadcast corresponds to a function necessary for a process of the processor based on the code indicative of the content of the program. If the program is needed, the processor loads and executes the program.

Program loading method and system for distributed processing system

Several processors and several communication control units are connected to a transmission medium. Each communication control unit has one or more terminal devices connected to it, and so any terminal device can be coupled to any processor. Each processor includes a central processing unit, a memory, and a control manager. The memory stores first information regarding processing being done with a terminal device coupled to the processor and second information regarding the communication control units connected to each of the processors and regarding the terminal devices being serviced by the processor. The control manager manages the communication control units based on the stored information. Information about the connections between the processors and the communication control units is broadcast to all processors. If any processor is faulty, another processor can take over the processing being done by the faulty processor. Likewise, further, processors can be added to the network, and their connection status is known to all other processors.

Information handling method and system utilizing multiple interconnected

Programs in a plurality of processors connected through a common network are started when a plurality of data necessary for starting the program are received from the network. When the processor receives data from an external equipment, it adds the event number to the data and sends it to the network, and each processor determines whether all data necessary for starting the program in itself have been received and checks the relation among the received data by comparison with the event numbers of the received data.

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Hitachi, Japan

Hirokazu Kasashima