Program control system programmable to selectively execute a plurality of programs

Claim 1

A program control system for controlling simultaneous execution of a plurality of programs, the system comprising: a plurality of program executors each of which executes the corresponding program of said plurality of programs; a memory for storing said plurality of programs; a plurality of program counters each of which generates an address for reading the corresponding one of said programs from said memory; a selector for selecting an output of one of said program counters and providing said output to said memory; wherein each of said programs are stored in said memory and are executed by the corresponding one of said program executors indicated by said address generated by the corresponding one of said program counters selected by said selector; wherein said memory sequentially stores instructions from each of said programs; and a program counter switching controller that is programmable with a program counter switching rule and which controls selection of said program counters by said selector in accordance with said program counter switching rule, wherein said program counter switching rule specifies which of said plurality of program counters said selector will select and the number of times each of said selected program counters will be repetitively selected in succession by said selector.