Patent ID: 8811378

Claim:
A system comprising: a plurality of tightly coupled processing nodes, each processing node being part of a cluster and connected to an intra-cluster network which passes communication packets between all processing nodes of each cluster, each processing node comprising one or more inter-cluster opto-electronic links and one or more intra-cluster electronic links; a plurality of circuit switched networks using a circuit switching mode, interconnecting the tightly coupled processing nodes through the one or more intra-cluster electronic links, and handling data transfers that meet at least one criteria; and a plurality of electronic packet switched networks, also interconnecting the processing nodes through the one or more inter-cluster opto-electronic links, handling data transfers that do not meet the at least one criteria; wherein the plurality of circuit switched networks and the plurality of electronic packet switched networks operate simultaneously and the plurality of electronic packet switched networks have a bandwidth per link that is ten percent the bandwidth per link of the plurality of circuit switched networks.