Patent ID: 7877527

Claim:
A computer, comprising: a gateway CPU that communicates with at least one of: I/O devices and peripherals, said gateway CPU residing in a first processing layer of the computer that includes a physical interface between the computer and a transmission medium; a plurality of application-specific CPUs communicating with the gateway CPU, said plurality of application-specific CPUs residing in a second processing layer of the computer different from the first processing layer, and each application-specific CPU dedicated to running only one main application but capable of running secondary administrative applications, each of the application-specific CPUs accessing the gateway CPU, or the gateway CPU accessing the application-specific CPUs, when necessary to access the at least one of: the I/O devices and the peripherals, such that primary functions of the gateway CPU include acting as a buffer or clearinghouse for data to and from the application-specific CPUs and does not perform application-specific processing itself; and further comprising at least one connection between one of the application-specific CPUs and another of the application-specific CPUs such that the data can be directly transferred from one to another.