Abstract: A smart card comprises a microcontroller, a memory unit, a storage unit, and a communications unit. The smart card may be connected to a terminal, which is in turn may be connected to a host computer and/or a network. The smart card is configured to initiate communications with the terminal, which enables the smart card to control the terminal, host computer, or network and to access the resources connected to the terminal, host computer, or network. A communications protocol defines the commands that the smart card can send and allows the smart card to communicate using asynchronous or logical asynchronous communication.

Abstract: Smart (integrated circuit) card supervisory control and data acquisition. Industrial processes may be controlled by one or more smart cards. Signals may be received from an industrial process by the smart card, the signals may be processed by the smart card, and control signals may be sent from the smart card to the industrial process in response to the processed signals. The smart card may provide security/tamper resistance for proprietary information associated with the industrial process. Control of the industrial process may be distributed among one or more smart cards at particular process points to receive sensed process parameters and to send control signals to implement process actions.

Abstract: A system and method for data processing in which data processing tasks are arranged as separate processes, each of which can be executed by a dedicated central processing unit or by one or more shared processing units. All communication between processes takes place via streams of data items. Each stream receives data items from a single source, for example from an input to the processing system or from one of the processes. Every data item appended to a stream is associated with a unique index value--even if physical memory locations are re-used, index values never are. A process can request a data item in terms of the stream where it is stored and the index value associated with it. Within constraints imposed by physical storage capacity, any index value can be included in a request. If the data item is not yet available, execution of the process is suspended until the data item becomes available.

Abstract: A machine implemented process for advising on several alternatives for recovering from single or multiple component failures in a distributed process well-site instrumentation logging system which uses the rules, assumptions and constraints governing the hardware configurability of the well-site instrumentation system. The process locates and tests one or more reconfigurations for a failure scenario, and presents the possible reconfiguration scenarios in order of preference.