Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Distributed data processing
Reexamination Certificate
1998-12-17
2004-04-20
Dinh, Dung C. (Department: 2153)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Distributed data processing
C709S209000, C713S152000, C705S001100, C705S030000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06725250
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention generally relates to one or more computer networks having computers like personal computers or network computers such as servers with microprocessors preferably linked by broadband transmission means and having hardware, software, firmware, and other means such that at least two parallel processing operations occur that involve at least two sets of computers in the network or in networks connected together, a form of metacomputing. More particularly, this invention relates to one or more large networks composed of smaller networks and large numbers of computers connected, like the Internet, wherein more than one separate parallel or massively parallel processing operation involving more than one different set of computers occurs simultaneously. Even more particularly, this invention relates to one or more such networks wherein more than one (or a very large number of) parallel or massively parallel microprocessing processing operations occur separately or in an interrelated fashion; and wherein ongoing network processing linkages can be established between virtually any microprocessors of separate computers connected to the network.
Still more particularly, this invention relates generally to a network structure or architecture that enables the shared used of network microprocessors for parallel processing, including massive parallel processing, and other shared processing such as multitasking, wherein personal computer owners provide microprocessor processing power to a network, preferably for parallel or massively parallel processing or multitasking, in exchange for network linkage to other personal and other computers supplied by network providers such as Internet Service Providers (ISP's), including linkage to other microprocessors for parallel or other processing such as multitasking. The financial basis of the shared use between owners and providers being be whatever terms to which the parties agree, subject to governing laws, regulations, or rules, including payment from either party to the other based on periodic measurement of net use or provision of processing power or preferably involving no payment, with the network system (software, hardware, etc) providing an essentially equivalent usage of computing resources by both users and providers (since any network computer operated by either entity can potentially be both a user and provider of computing resources alternately (or even simultaneously, assuming multitasking), with potentially an override option by a user (exercised on the basis, for example, of user profile or user's credit line or through relatively instant payment).
Finally, this invention relates to a network system architecture including hardware and software that provides use of the Internet or its future equivalents or successors (and most other networks) without cost to most users of personal computers or most other computers, while also providing those users (and all other users, including of supercomputers) with computer processing performance that can at least double every 18 months through metacomputing means. This metacomputing performance increase provided by the new MetaInternet (or Metanet for short) is in addition to all other performance increases, such as those already anticipated by Moore's Law.
By way of background, the computer industry has been governed over the last 30 years by Moore's Law, which holds that the circuitry of computer chips has been shrunk substantially each year, yielding a new generation of chips every 18 months with twice as many transistors, so that microprocessor computing power is effectively doubled every year and a half.
The long term trend in computer chip miniaturization is projected to continue unabated over the next few decades. For example, slightly more than a decade ago a 16 kilobit DRAM memory chip (storing 16,000 data bits) was typical; the standard in 1996 was the 16 megabit chip (16,000,000 data bits), which was introduced in 1993; and industry projections are for 16 gigabit memory chips (16,000,000,000 data bits) to be introduced in 2008 and 64 gigabit chips in 2011, with 16 terabit chips (16,000,000,000,000 data bits) conceivable by the mid-tolate 2020's. This is a thousand-fold increase regularly every fifteen years. Hard drive speed and capacity are also growing at a spectacular rate.
Similarly regular and enormous improvements are anticipated to continue in microprocessor computing speeds, whether measured in simple clock speed or MIPS (millions of instructions for second) or numbers of transistors per chip. For example, performance has improved by four or five times every three years since Intel launched its X86 family of microprocessors used in the currently dominant “Wintel” standard personal computers. The initial Intel Pentium Pro microprocessor was introduced in 1995 and is a thousand times faster than the first IBM standard PC microprocessor, the Intel 8088, which was introduced in 1979. By 1996 the fastest of microprocessors, like Digital Equipment Corp.'s Alpha chip, is faster than the processor in the original Cray Y-MP supercomputer.
Both microprocessors and software (and firmware and other components) are also evolving from 8 bit and 16 bit systems into 32 bit systems that are becoming the standard today, with some 64 bit systems like the DEC Alpha already introduced and more coming, with future increases to 128 bit also likely.
A second major development trend in the past decade or so has been the rise of parallel processing, a computer architecture utilizing more than one CPU microprocessor (often many more, even thousands of relatively simple microprocessors, for massively parallel processing) linked together into a single computer with new operating systems having modifications that allow such an approach. The field of supercomputing has been taken over by this approach, including designs utilizing many identical standard personal computer microprocessors.
Hardware, firmware, software and other components specific to parallel processing are in a relatively early stage of development compared to that for single processor computing, and therefore much further design and development is expected in the future to better maximize the computing capacity made possible by parallel processing. One likely improvement is much more effective system architecture for parallel processing that does not rely on the multiple microprocessors having to share memory, thereby allowing more independent operation of those microprocessors, each with their own discrete memory, like current personal computers, workstations and most other computer systems architecture; for unconstrained operation, each individual microprocessor must have rapid access to sufficient memory.
Several models of personal computers are now available with more than one microprocessor. It seems inevitable that in the future personal computers, broadly defined to include versions not currently in use, will also employ parallel computing utilizing multiple microprocessors or massively parallel computing with very large numbers of microprocessors. Future designs, such Intel's Merced chip, are expected to have a significant number of parallel processors on a single microprocessor chip.
A form of parallel processing is also being employed within microprocessor design itself. The generation in 1996 of microprocessors such at the Intel Pentium have more than one data path within the microprocessor in which data can be processed, with two to three paths being typical.
The third major development trend is the increasing size of bandwidth, which is a measure of communications power between computers connected by a network. Before now, the local area networks and telephone lines typically linking computers including personal computers have operated at speeds much lower than the processing speeds of a personal computer. For example, a typical Intel Pentium operates at 100 MIPS (millions of instructions per second), whereas a typical Ethernet connecting the PC's i
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