Data General Corporation

Leo C Waible, Iii

Shreyaunsh R Shah

Michael A Pogue

Morgan J Dempsey

Mark Douglas Hummel

David I Epstein

Rosemarie Alicandro

Rona J Newmark

Paul K Marino

Peter C Bixby

Donald D Burn

Eric H Enberg

Paul W Woodbury

Jeffrey F Hatalsky

A method of assigning priorities and resolving bus contention in a distributed computer system is disclosed. Each system node is assigned an identifier. Priorities are reassigned at each change in bus access such that the node that most recently had access to the bus is assigned the lowest priority with the node having the next identifier in sequence being assigned the highest priority and all other nodes assigned priority in accordance with their identifier's position in the sequence. The identifiers are logically treated as organized in a circular fashion such that the lowest node identifier is considered to come next in the sequence after the highest node identifier.

Contention revolution in a digital computer system

A memory for use in a digital data system stores n-bit words, and provides for accessing any group of n contiguous bits, regardless of whether aligned on an n-bit boundary. Barrel shifters facilitate rotating the retrieved bits so as to align them as convenient.

A computer memory for accessing any word-sized group of contiguous bits

Growing community of inventors

Northboro, MA, United States of America

Leo C Waible, Iii