Patent ID: 7609703

Claim:
A group communication system, comprising a plurality of discrete application nodes; at least one memory node providing a shared memory, the shared memory providing a message queue; a network interconnecting the plurality of discrete application nodes and the at least one memory node, such that the message queue is available to the application nodes; and a communication controller for directing communication transactions between a group established by at least a subset of the plurality of discrete application nodes using the shared memory, the communication controller to provide to the application nodes a code library operable to permit a first application node to assemble a communication instruction set including instruction subsets selected from a group consisting of a send message subset, a join message subset, a read message subset, and a leave message subset, wherein at least the send, join, read and leave message subsets are executable atomically; wherein message to be added to the message queue includes a view identifier identifying a view of the group membership as of the adding of the message.