Patent ID: 7222270

Claim:
A method for protecting the data in a symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) computer system, comprising the steps of: (a) detecting errors in said data in a dataflow of said computer system and determining and indicating a data error type for each of the detected errors as one of a plurality of data error types; (b) managing error status of said detected errors and distinguishing each one of said plurality of data types on a status bus as an error status associated with specific data of said computer system, wherein the said step of managing error status allows for concurrent pipelining of multiple packets of data through a shared resource while maintaining proper error status for each packet; and (c) in the process of managing error status of said detected errors merging new data error type errors with existing error status; and then (d) distributing error status with said data to propagate each one of said plurality of different data type errors though said dataflow of said system as separate identified data error types identified with said specific data having a detected error identified in said computer system data.