A plurality of elemental processors each include a local memory for storing data and task programs and an execution section for executing the task programs. A communications section transfers data among the processors. In a method of parallel processing with these elemental processors, a task program is executed in one of the processors. A detection operation is conducted to determine whether the data from the task program is to be copied to the local memories of other processors. The detection is based on predetermined information which is stored in the local memory of the processor which performs the task program and indicates which of the other processors will need the data. The detection also determines which of the other processors that will require access to the data are ready to receive the data. Concurrently and in parallel with the execution of the task program, the data is transmitted to each of the elemental processors that are awaiting the data with only a write instruction and without any communications instruction.

A device interface module provides multiple concurrently operating data transfer channels between multiple groups of peripheral devices and ad multiported buffer memory which communicates via an interface bus to other external modules of a computer system.

A plurality of n-dimensional modular entities are internally interconnected via as many as n duel port random access memory devices (DPRs), each memory device dedicated solely to the interchange of information between two modular entities in an n-dimensional lattice of modular entities. One or more of the modular entities may itself be a separate multiprocessor architecture.

The text to speech (TTS) system comprises two main components, a linguistic processor and an acoustic processor. The former is responsible for receiving an input text, and breaking it down into a sequence of phonemes. Each phoneme is assigned a duration and pitch. The acoustic processor is then responsible for reproducing the phonemes, and concatenating them into the desired acoustic output. The TTS system is driven from the output in that the linguistic processor does not operate until it receives a request from the acoustic processor for input. This request, and a return message that it can now be satisfied, are routed via a process dispatcher. By driving the system from the output, the system can be accurately halted in the event that the acoustic output needs to be interrupted.

An imaging system acquires imaged data from a non-invasive examination of the subject. The data is transferred among various image processing agents on a data bus. A data acquisition agent receives the image data from the non-invasive examination and generates subsequent agent locations and transmits the subsequent agent locations and the packets of image data along the data bus. Various image processing agents each receive packets of data transmitted with that agent's location and performs imaging and processing operations on the data packets generating another agent location and thereafter transmitting the other agent location and process data packets along the data bus. The display agent receives the processed image data packets from one of the image processing agents via the data bus, stores the processed image data packets and communicates the process image data to a man-readable image display.