Computer network of interactive multitasking computers for parallel processing of network subtasks concurrently with local tasks

摘要

A local area computer network provides distributed parallel processing. The network comprises a plurality of workstations or personal computers, each having preemptive multitasking for the interactive execution of a local task in the foreground concurrently with a remote network subtask in the background. A large compute-intensive task may be partitioned into a plurality of parallel subtasks executed simultaneously with each subtask executed in the background by a respective workstations without substantial interference with the local task being executed concurrently in the foreground. The computer time and processing power which would otherwise be wasted while waiting for slow input/output operations is instead utilized to provide a powerful parallel multiprocessor system for handling compute-intensive tasks too large for an individual workstations.