Dynamic task allocation in a multi-processor system employing distributed control processors and distributed arithmetic processors

Claim 1

A distributed data flow signal processing network for processing data flow signal processing primitive tasks in a manner that balances the processing load among nodes of the network, said network comprising: a plurality of distributed control processors, each comprising a central processing unit coupled to a data memory, and to a program memory having a queue, and wherein one of the distributed control processors comprises a supervisory control processor having additional queues equal in number to the number of distributed control processors in the network, and wherein each of the additional queues are associated with a respective one of the distributed control processors; a first communication link coupled between each of the distributed control processors for transferring control messages therebetween; a plurality of distributed arithmetic processors, each comprising a central processing unit and a data memory, and wherein individual ones of the plurality of distributed arithmetic processors are respectively associated with a selected one of the plurality of distributed control processors to form a plurality of processing nodes; a second communication link coupled between each respective processor of the plurality of distributed control processors and its associated distributed arithmetic processor that forms a respective processing node, for transferring control messages and data blocks therebetween; and a third communication link comprising a data bus coupled between each of the distributed arithmetic processors for transferring data blocks therebetween; each of the distributed control processors assigned one or more types of the signal processing primitive tasks in the application to have processing control over said primitive tasks so that the distributed arithmetic processor associated with the distributed control processor assigned a given type of primitive task is given preference for execution of the given task, each of the distributed control processors comprising means for monitoring the number of signal processing primitive tasks in its program memory queue that are to be processed by its associated arithmetic processor and for transferring processing control over selected tasks to the supervisory control processor if the number of processing tasks are above a predetermined limit; the supervisory control processor comprising means for monitoring the number of processing tasks to be performed by each of the processing nodes, and for causing the execution by selected ones of the processing nodes of said processing tasks for which processing control has been transferred by said distributed control processor, to allocate the processing load among all the nodes to redistribute the processing load among the distributed arithmetic processors.