Abstract: A method and process for operating an interprocess communication mechanism in a multi processor computer system are described. If a sender node needs sending a message to a receiver node, it accesses the latter for available storage space. If available, the message is transferred and the sender node may resume processing. If nonavailable the transferring is deferred. In either case the message is queued to any message either awaiting processing at the receiver node or awaiting transfer, in that at the instant when such transfer was necessary, no storage space had been available. If the receiver node wants to process a message, it accesses the least recent item of the message queue and unlinks it, while belated transferring is now executed, if necessary.Thereupon the original sender node was still kept waiting, it is now allowed to resume processing. Generally only two communication operations are required per message.

Abstract: A description is given of a data processing network that is constructed as a product network of two or more factor networks. At least one of the factor networks is a chordal ring of at least five stations, or a generalized chordal ring. A generalized chordal ring is formed by dividing each of the stations in a chordal ring (124, 130, 136) into a number of sub-stations. The sub-stations within a station constitute a homogeneous network. The external connections of a station are divided over the relevant sub-stations. In this way an optimum value for the degree (G) and diameter (D) of the network can be chosen on the basis of a selection strategy.