Parallel searching system having a master processor for controlling plural slave processors for independently processing respective search requests

Claim 1

A parallel processing search system for searching and updating a database at the request of a host system, comprising: a master processor connected to a host system bus for transfer of information between said master processor and said host system bus; a data bus connected to said master processor; plural slave processors connected to said data bus for independently processing respective search requests under the control of said master processor, said slave processors also connected to said master processor via control lines, said master processor independently and dynamically programming said slave processors to perform match comparison processing of search patterns based on requests from said host system to said master processor, wherein those slave processors programmed by said master processor perform match comparison processing under the control of said master processor and each programmed slave processor signals said master processor when the search pattern with which the respective slave processor was programmed is matched with data on said data bus; a disk drive interface connected to a disk which stores a database via a disk channel connecting the disk drive to the disk; a buffer memory connected to the data bus and the disk drive for storing of the database retrieved from the disk via the disk drive and for sequentially placing data from the database on the data bus for match comparison by said slave processors so that a search of the database can be made by said slave processors, said buffer memory being controlled by said master processor to store update data transferred by said host to said master processor and to transfer an updated database to said disk via said disk drive interface.