Apparatus and method for cooperative and concurrent coprocessing of

Abstract

The data processing capacity of a practical semiconductor computer system, having both local and system buses, can be expanded both in degree of complexity and magnitude by providing a method and means for cooperatively and concurrently coprocessing digital information among a plurality of processors sharing the same local bus and collectively accessing the system bus as a system unit. In other words, a central processor has primary control and access to a local bus and may have access to a system or common bus shared among many other processors. Also sharing the local bus with the central processor is a plurality of specialized or dedicated processors which are continuously apprised of or actively monitor the internal operational status and operation then being performed by the central processor. The active monitoring of the activity of the other processors sharing the local bus distinguishes these dedicated processors from conventional direct memory accessing processors. Certain ones of the instructions fetched simultaneously by the central processor and the specialized processor from the system memory are reserved for execution in one of the dedicated processors which then shares the local bus with the central processor by means of communicating through a plurality of signals with respect to the status, mode, arbitration, and control of the local bus.