METHOD FOR MANAGING SYSTEM TIME IN A MASTER-SLAVE RELATION MULTI-PROCESSOR ENVIRONMENT AND AN APPARATUS THEREOF, ESPECIALLY REGARDING TO DECIDING SYSTEM TIME WITHOUT INTERVENTION OF A SYSTEM OPERATOR

摘要

PURPOSE: A method for managing system time in a master-slave relation multi-processor environment and an apparatus thereof are provided to decide system time for itself in starting or restarting a main processor and slave processors, or examining inter-processor time accordance without intervention of a system operator. CONSTITUTION: A buffer(20) receives processor time of each slave processor by using inter-processor communication and stores the processor time. A counter(22) increases a receiving count by 1 whenever receiving the processor time from the predetermined slave processor. When a value of the receiving count becomes equal to the number of the slave processors in a system, the counter stops storing the processor time. A receiving time sorting part(24) sorts slave processor times stored in the buffer(20) in order of time magnitude. A receiving time comparing part(26) obtains and outputs a hyper region of most frequent time frequency by referring to sorted times of the slave processors. A system time setting part(28) obtains a mean of the processor times corresponding to the hyper region in case that a main processor is started and restarted, and decides the mean as system time. The system time setting part(28) examines whether the time possessed by the main processor is included in the hyper region in case of periodically examining inter-processor time accordance of the main processor. If included, the time of the main processor is decided as system time. A system time distributing part(30) distributes the decided time to each slave processor.