Patent ID: 7403874

Claim:
A method of prioritizing formatting actions of a number of data formatters, comprising: instantiating a number of threads for execution by a processing system, the number of threads sharing thread processing resources, and the number of threads including at least two threads of dissimilar priority, wherein the number of threads includes at least one thread of high priority having a higher execution priority than at least one thread of low priority; launching a number of data formatters on the number of threads, each of the data formatters accessing circuit test data items in a data store, and each of the data formatters outputting a different set of formatted test data for analysis by a person or application program, wherein the number of data formatters includes at least two data formatters that are respectively launched on ones of the at least two threads having dissimilar priorities; and periodically requesting allocation of the thread processing resources for a number of highest priority active threads, thereby giving priority to the formatting actions performed by any of the data formatters that are launched on the number of highest priority active threads, wherein an active thread is a thread executing a data formatter with formatting actions to perform, wherein the number of highest priority active threads includes the at least one thread of high priority.