MICROCOMPUTER WITH DISCONNECTED, OPEN, INDEPENDENT, BIMEMORY ARCHITECTURE, ALLOWING LARGE INTERACTING, INTERCONNECTED MULTI-MICROCOMPUTER PARALLEL SYSTEMS ACCOMMODATING MULTIPLE LEVELS OF PROGRAMMER DEFINED HIERARCHY
Overview of the Invention
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION
This is a continuation in part application of Serial Number 541,453, filed October 13, 1983, now abandoned.
TECHNOLOGICAL CONTEXT OF THE INVENTION
The advent of the Eniac computer and later computers has signaled a period of technology in which numerous problems that were previously insolvable could be solved. However, even with the increased data processing power achieved by the computer, the magnitude and complexity of some problems still defies the computer age.
One of the most evident unsolved problems is climate and weather forecasting. In the May Issue of Science 82, Jim Hansen, the Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, stressed that the ability to forecast the future climate of the world with a relatively high degree of accuracy is of very great importance to all the people of the world. Hansen and his colleagues have, accordingly, been engaged in formulating mathematical models which might explain and predict world climate. However, the models generated have been greatly simplified so that existing computer systems can process the data. As a result of the simplifications, such climate models have been less than optimal.
To a great extent, the problem with predicting weather and climate relates to the vast number of atmospheric volumes which interact to form an overall pattern. That is, the atmosphere can be viewed as a multitude of cells encircling the earth, each cell containing sundry forms of information which changes over time, and affects the characteristics of other adjoining cells.
If the cells were configured as interacting, almost spherical ellipsoids of influence, with each ellipsoidal cell enclosing essentially 25 cubic miles and with only a 25 mile layer of contiguous ellipsoidal cells being formed about the earth, approximately 200 million cells would be required. A smaller cell size or increasing the volume to be considered would, of course, increase the number of ellipsoidal cells required. In any case, let each cell contain information requiring, say 1,000 floating point calculations per second. A computer system designed to handle information for the various cells would thus be required to perform 200 billion interacting floating point calculations per second.
If a computer system based on existing technology were capable of performing such calculations, the cost would be exorbitant.
Moreover, adaptability of such a system based on known art, would be limited. Relying on prior technology, the solution to modeling weather and the climate thus appears arduous if achievable.
Other problems which are similarly difficult to solve at reasonable costs include large oil field geological surveys, econometric models, air traffic control systems, and other large scale complex three-dimensional space prediction problems. For example, econometric models which evaluate myriad possibilities based on "what if" assumptions and calculations require complex, costly systems.
The more recent Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) computer problem is substantially more complex than any of the other applications mentioned above.
