A message processing system has a common transmission medium and a plurality of processors or processing equipments connected to the common transmission medium. The processors process messages independenty from each other. Each processor adds information relating to an order of messages to a message resulting from processing by the processor and sends to resulting message to the common transmission medium. In accordance with the invention, a plurality of messages are readily identified.

Secondary storage subsystems exchange messages and data with host data processing systems and also forward messages between host systems. Host systems thereby communicate with each other in addition to having access to data in subsystem storage. Access to subsystem storage is initiated by a “request” sent from a host to the subsystem. Each request is a message containing an array of one or more commands, each command specifying a transfer of data or a control function to be performed by the subs…

A data communication system which includes a data distributor, a communication station and a plurality of front-end-processors. These front-end-processors are connected with a computer through a common bus. The distributor distributes the data received by the station to one available front-end-processor, which preprocesses the received data, and transfers the pre-processed data to the computer through the bus. By operating the front-end-processors in parallel with respect to successively receive…

Methods and apparatus are described, in the context of an information handling system, that permit data chaining in a data streaming mode to be performed through a channel extender. The information handling system includes a processor channel and a peripheral device controller which communicate with one another over the channel extender. The invention allows the separation between the processor channel and peripheral device controller to be extended up to several (e.g. 1, 2 or 3) kilometers vers…

A method of transferring data from a computer to a remote entity. A predetermined block count is stored in the computer. One or more data blocks are moved from the computer to one or more buffers, respectively, in an interfacing device. The block count is decremented for each of the data blocks so moved. One or more of the data blocks are then transmitted from the interfacing device to the remote entity. An acknowledge signal is received from the remote entity for each data block received by the…

A method for high speed data transfer between a user operated PC and a remote PC. First, a link is established between the user operated PC and remote PC. A data file is transferred from the user operated PC to an interfacing device connected to the user operated PC. The file is then formatted in the interfacing device, and transmitted therefrom to the remote PC over an ISDN line. A second data file may be transferred from the remote PC to the user operated PC contemporaneously with the transfer…

An information transmit system includes a first communication element having a guaranteed quality required to transmit real-time information, and a second communication element different from the first communication element. The system also includes a transmission element for transmitting stored real-time information using the first communication element and for transmitting real-time data using the second communication element, where the real-time data using the second communication element has…

A system and method of using spare disk bandwidth and buffer capacity maximizes the system throughput of a multimedia server. An important issue is determining a criterion for selecting a data stream for which the additional disk bandwidth should be used. Minimization of buffer consumption is selected as the criterion to select an appropriate media stream to use the spare system resources. Buffer consumption measures not only the amount of buffer but also the amount of time the space is occupied…

A data processing system that has a data processing unit for performing desired processing with respect to a stream of data such as video data and/or audio data, a data providing unit having stream data which becomes the object of that processing and for providing the data in accordance with a request, and a delivering unit for delivering the provided stream data to the data processing unit. The units are constituted on any one or more of the nodes on the network. Further, a data processing meth…

A self-timed data streaming receiver for a routing chip. Incoming flits are received by a distributor that distributes the flits between two self-timing FIFOs. A collector coupled to both FIFOs at their opposite ends takes the two streams of flits and recreates the original stream of flits prior to coupling the flits to routing control circuitry. A self-timed data streaming transmitter is also described.