Multiprocessor system comprising a plurality of data processors which are interconnected by a communication network

Claim 1

A data processing system having a plurality of stations, each of said stations having local resources including at least one local data processor and a local memory that is accessible to any local data processor of said station but unreadable to any other data processor, said stations being interconnected by a general communications network, said system having: receiving means for receiving a user application program that specifies a set of resources required for executing said application program; job control means, for dynamic assignment of jobs making up said application program fed by said receiving means for loading, under conditional enabling by a signal indicating the availability of resources in said plurality of stations, at least a component of said application program into a subset of said plurality of stations as at least one job, each job accommodating at least one superprocess, wherein said superprocess is a number of processes each having a number of elements and operations performed sequentially on the same data, while allocating each superprocess to a single station of said plurality of stations, said job control means further having job starting means and job stopping means; kernel means in each of said stations fed by said job control means for receiving superprocess allocation information and also said kernel means in a first station being addressable by a user process in said first station and by at least one operating system process in a second station, said kernel means controlling interprocess interaction, having: enabling means for enabling within a particular superprocess all processes thereof to access commonly variable information including at least data present in said local memory; privilege means for providing access to each process within a superprocess a private memory stack within said local memory; mailbox control means for assigning to each superprocess a mailbox within said local memory, said mailbox writable by any superprocess within said system, but readable exclusively to its own assigned superprocess each superprocess comprising writing means for writing block-wise information in a selected mailbox space assigned to any superprocess, each mailbox having a filing degree indicator with control means for generating, under control of a read operation by a superprocess in its own mailbox, a wait signal for this process; for signalling, under control of a write operation by a superprocess, a full mailbox; said job control means having means to stop an attempt to write into a full mailbox, but to otherwise enable a read or write operation by a superprocess to take place.