Abstract: One aspect of the invention provides an apparatus for implementing a state machine. The apparatus comprises a software component and a hardware component each arranged to implement at least one state and to be responsive to at least one input event to perform one or more functions. The apparatus thus implements a hybrid state machine offering the fast performance of a hardware implementation where required, while offering the flexibility and reduced testing times of a software implementation in respect of any aspect of the state machine not implemented in hardware. The apparatus is particularly suited for use in telecommunications systems and, in one embodiment, is arranged to perform pointer interpretation in accordance with ITU-T standard G.783.

Abstract: A system comprises a main processor, one or more sub-processors and an event queue apparatus arranged to queue events to be transmitted between the main processor and the sub-processors. The event queue apparatus comprises one or more storage devices arranged to implement a plurality of event queues; and an event queue status indicator, including a respective status component for each event queue. The status components indicate if the respective event queue contains at least one event. The main processor associates a respective priority with each status component and selects to handle an event from the event queue associated with the highest priority of the non-empty event queue(s).