Patent ID: 8898210

Claim:
A method for determining a minimum/maximum of a plurality of binary values held by a plurality of processor memories or memories associated with respective processors, the method comprising: determining a bit position in the plurality of binary values subsequent to which all bit values are the same, wherein the determining including, commonly reading all binary values from all memories and generating a bit-wise OR combination of the commonly read plurality of binary values and a bit-wise AND combination of the commonly read plurality of binary values and based on the bit-wise OR combination and the bit-wise AND combination of the commonly read plurality of binary values, determining the bit location in the plurality of binary values subsequent to which all bit values are the same; selecting from the plurality of binary values, those binary values, the bit value of which at the bit position determined in the determining and all subsequent bit positions, if any, comprises a predetermined value; repeating the determining and selecting, wherein the determining is repeated on the basis of the binary values selected in the selecting until only one selected binary value, or a plurality of matching binary values, remain; and providing the remaining binary value as the minimum/maximum.