Patent ID: 7788396

Claim:
A method of synchronously transferring distributed subchunks of data between a plurality of processor nodes coupled to a network switch, said method comprising: periodically broadcasting, by a management process executed on at least one of the processor nodes to each of the plurality of processor nodes via the network switch, a transmit command to initiate each of a plurality of sequential transmit periods; sending to the management process, by each processor node having at least one subchunk to send, a message for each subchunk to be sent, each message identifying a source processor node and a destination processor node; selecting, by the management process, at least one message received from the processor nodes to ensure that each processor node scheduled to send at least one subchunk sends only one subchunk during a following transmit period and that each processor node scheduled to receive at least on subchunk receives only one subchunk during the following transmit period; sending, by the management process, a plurality of transmit requests, each transmit request sent to a processor node that had sent a corresponding message that was selected; and transmitting, by each processor node receiving a transmit request, a subchunk identified by the received transmit request to a destination processor node in response to the following transmit command.