Patent ID: 7826379

Claim:
A method for determining a nodal fault in a parallel processing computing system having a plurality of interconnected nodes, the method comprising: determining a master node of the plurality of interconnected nodes; causing each of the plurality of interconnected nodes to sequentially communicate with all other of the interconnected nodes in a lockstep fashion, wherein the master node is configured to coordinate the sequential communication; and determining from the sequential communications the nodal fault relating to at least one of the plurality of interconnected nodes, wherein sequentially communicating includes: sending a first control packet from the master node to a first of two slave nodes of the plurality of nodes, wherein the first control packet prompts the first slave node to communicate with a second of the two slave nodes of the plurality of nodes; and sending a second control packet from the master node to the second slave node, wherein the second control packet prompts the second slave node to communicate with the first slave node.