Patent ID: 8189612

Claim:
System on chip comprising, integrated on a single chip: a network having routers connected to one another by means of physical connections; a plurality of processing units and a plurality of network interfaces, each network interface being associated to a processing unit, each processing unit being connected to at least a router of said network via an associated network interface interposed between said router and said processing unit, said each network interface and said each processing unit being able to be configured into a plurality of configurations; a central controller that controls the running of a task by said network interfaces or said processing units, the central controller synchronizing operations of the plurality of processing units in running the task by transmitting corresponding indices to the plurality of network interfaces; a configuration server connected to said network; at least one network interface comprising a local controller that configures said network interface and said processing unit into said configurations by means of configuration contents, wherein each configuration content defines a communication configuration of the network interface or an operating configuration of the processing unit, each configuration being indexed by a respective index of said indices; said network interface further comprising a configuration management unit including a client module that: checks whether the content of a configuration is absent from a local memory of the network interface; transmits a request to said configuration server, via said network, when said content of a configuration is unavailable in said network interface, wherein said request has for argument the index of the unavailable configuration, receives, via said network, from said configuration server, the content of said unavailable configuration; provides the local controller with the content of the configuration thus received to configure at least one element of said network interface or the associated processing unit to run said task; said server transmits, upon said request, a response to said network interface including the configuration content corresponding to said index.