The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 17, 1991
Filed:
Feb. 29, 1988
David M Chastain, Plano, TX (US);
James E Mankovich, Colorado Springs, CO (US);
Gary B Gostin, Coppell, TX (US);
Convex Computer Corporation, Richardson, TX (US);
Abstract
A computer system comprises a plurality of independent processors which can either execute a separate process for each processor, or execute parallel process operations across multiple processors for one process. The computer system includes a set of communication registers divided into a group of frames and a set of semaphores which correspond respectively to the registers. Typical processes have both serial and parallel code segments. During serial execution, a process is executed by a single processor, but when a parallelization instruction is encountered, which indicates that code can be executed in parallel, a semaphore is posted to invite other processors to join in parallel execution of the process. If any other processors in the system are idle, those processors detect the semaphore and accept a thread of process operation. Two or more processors may join in parallel operation if sufficient operations are available. However, if all processors are busy, then the processor conducting the serial operation will also execute all of the parallel operations. Thus, the processors are self-allocated, rather than being used on a demand or master-servant basis. This permits a greater throughput for the system because processors are not held idle when there is available process work to be done.