Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.

William B Barker

William R Crowther

Frank E Heart

Severo M Ornstein

Computer apparatus which employs a plurality of processing units, a memory unit, and a communication unit, each of the units including a data transfer bus. A bus coupler is provided between each pair of units of differing type to form a distributed data communications network. An addressable, passive task register is associated with one of the units for communication through the couplers and is adapted to register a task priority value associated with a task request, the register being readable by any one of the processor units to obtain the highest priority value registry.

Multiprocessor computer apparatus employing distributed communications

The error-checking scheme disclosed herein is adapted for use in digital data processing systems, e.g. computers, in which binary data is variously transmitted and/or stored and in which the data source or destination is designated by a binary address. In a preferred embodiment, the data is divided into two fields and a respective parity bit is generated corresponding to each data field. Each data parity bit is then combined with a parity bit corresponding to the binary address to yield a respective combinational parity bit. Each of the resultant combinational parity bits is then sourced with the respective data field. Accordingly, a system sub-component receiving the sourced data with the combinational parity bits can detect any type of single error occurring in either the address or the data.

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Maynard, MA, United States of America

William B Barker