Patent ID: 7698251

Claim:
A method of monitoring processes executing in a multiprocessor system comprising multiple clusters of processors, the method comprising: collecting information associated with the processes at local collectors within the multiple clusters to generate locally aggregated data; responsive to an event indicating that transmission of the aggregated data object should be performed, time-stamping the locally aggregated data with a timestamp; further responsive to the event indicating that transmission of the aggregated data object should be performed, transmitting the aggregated data with the timestamp to a central manager; receiving the aggregated data at the central manager; responsive to receiving the aggregated data at the central manager, determining whether or not the value of a time stamp indicates that the corresponding aggregated data is outdated or a duplicate of previously-received data; and responsive to determining that the value of the time stamp indicates that the corresponding aggregated data is not outdated and not a duplicate of the previously-received data, updating data managed by the central manager for the corresponding local collector with the received aggregated data; responsive to determining that the value of the time stamp indicates that the corresponding aggregated data is outdated or is a duplicate of the previously-received data, discarding the received aggregated data; accumulating the received aggregated data in one or more data values at the central manager and updated in common from all of the multiple clusters; and computing a modified value from the aggregated data using an exponential time-dependent decay function dependent on a difference between the time stamp and a previous time stamp, according to the equation r=r 1 *exp(−k*(t 2 −t 1 ))+r 2 , where r is the modified value, * is a multiplication operator, exp is an exponential operator, k is a decay constant, (r 1 , t 1 ) is a previous data value/timestamp pair and (r 2 , t 2 ) is a timestamp pair comprising the received aggregated data and the corresponding timestamp.