METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR DISTRIBUTED PROCESSING UTILIZING OBJECT ORIENTED PROCESSORS AND FOR RAPID ASIC DEVELOPMENT

摘要

The invention provides a distributed processing system (100) having a host processor (102) and one or more object oriented processors (104) which are embodied as discrete components and as a collection of components on a single ASIC chip. A high level command language and a communications bus system are also provided both for use with discrete components and as an integral part of an ASIC chip. The ASIC chips are premanufactured to operate identically to a corresponding collection of discrete components. A distributed processing system (100) is developed by coupling a collection of discrete object oriented processors (104) and a host processor (102) to a bus (114) and writing a command language script to define the functionality of the system. After the system is designed and tested using discrete components, a suitable premanufactured ASIC or collection of ASICs is chosen and coupled to a host processor (102). The high level command language script permits the host processor (102) and the ASIC system to perform identically to the discrete component system. An addressing scheme is provided in the command language such that multiple object oriented processors (104) may be given a single simultaneous command. Object oriented processors (104) may have child ports with soft addressability to which other object oriented processors (104) may be coupled. The child ports wich soft addressability have software assignable addresses.