Patent ID: 6766517
Filing Date: 2004-07-20
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
A communications coordinating arrangement for coordinating collective communications operations and non-collective communications operations among user threads in a plurality of processes, said user threads being configured to communicate using a selected message passing methodology, said collective communications coordinating arrangement comprising:A. associated with each of said processes, a respective slave thread that is configured to, in response to a collective communications request from a respective user thread in its associated process, generate a collective communications request message for transmission to a master thread, and, in response to a collective communications grant from said master thread, enable said respective user thread to engage in said collective communications operation; B. said master thread being configured to, after receiving collective communications request messages from all of the slave threads associated with processes that contain user threads that are to engage in the collective communications operation, generate said collective communications grant for transmission to the slave threads of all of the processes which contain user threads which are to engage in the collective communications operation; and C. said respective slave thread and said master thread being configured to: i.) allow, prior to the master thread receiving collective communications request messages from all of the slave threads associated with collective communications requesting user threads, non-collective communications among the collective communications requesting user threads, and ii.) allow, after the master thread receives collective communications request messages from all of the slave threads associated with collective communications requesting user threads and enables the collective communications requesting user threads to engage in the collective communications operation, non-collective communications among user threads not engaged in collective communications operations.