Abstract: This disclosure relates to a storage system employing a serial periodic memory as the storage mechanism. The storage mechanism has one or more control and access ports which control data transmission to and from the storage mechanism, each port including input and output devices associated with a data track of the storage mechanism. A queue shift register is coupled between the input and output devices to receive previously stored information characters which are to be temporarily held when newly received information characters are to be written into the storage media. Control of the system resides in the control ports and is activated by commands from the external sources. A character set is employed which includes a beginning delimiter character and an ending delimiter character such that information segments may be of any length up to the capacity of the storage mechanism.

Abstract: This disclosure is directed toward a data driven network of uniform processing or function modules and local storage units which network may be readily partitioned to accommodate various concurrent operations or tasks. Data transfer is serial in nature so that data segments can be of any length. Execution by each function module is initiated by arrival of all of the required data structures, one of which contains an operator and may be stored in the associated local storage unit. The other data structure may contain operands and modifiers. Thus, a series of such operators may be distributed throughout the network to increase processing performance and throughput. A particular character set and data structure format is also disclosed.