Patent ID: 8588234

Claim:
A data processing apparatus comprising: a plurality of modules connected to a ring bus, at least one of said plurality of modules comprising: a receiving unit adapted to receive a packet from another module; a determining unit adapted to determine whether to process, by the at least one module, data held in the packet received by said receiving unit, based on first information contained in the packet and indicating the processing order; a processing unit adapted to process the data when said determining unit determines that the data should be processed by the at least one module; a generating unit adapted to generate a packet containing the first information, a field indicating whether the data to be processed is indeed processed, and second information indicating whether the data to be processed is not processed but stalled; and a transmitting unit adapted to transmit, in accordance with the first information, the packet generated by said generating unit to a module next in the processing order, wherein said transmitting unit performs the transmission at a transmission interval longer than a predetermined time, when the first information and the second information indicate that the packet received by said receiving unit contains data which should be processed by the module next in the processing order and is not processed but stalled, wherein said transmitting unit performs the transmission at a transmission interval shorter than a predetermined time, when it is indicated by the first information and the second information that the packet received by said receiving unit contains data which should be processed by a module latter in processing order than the module next in the processing order and is not processed but stalled, and wherein said plurality of modules collaboratively process each packet in a preset processing order.