Communication protocol for distributed processing of software applications

A method of executing software on a digital processor system having a plurality of processing elements, the method comprising

• A. making available to a plurality of processing elements one or more block-type objects, each associated with instructions making up software upon which execution is to be effected;
• B. making available to the plurality of processing elements one or more data-type objects, each associated with data to be processed;
• C. making available to the plurality of processing elements one or more task-type objects that each identify a said block object and one or more data-type objects associated with data to be processed by the software associated with that block-type object;
• D. making available to the plurality of processing elements one or more objects (each, a “thread object”) defining a processing environment in which the data associated with the one or more data-type objects associated with a said task-type object is to be processed by the software associated with the block-type object associated with that task-type object.

A method of parallelizing execution of software on a digital processor system having a plurality of processing elements, the method comprising

• A. executing software on a first processing element to process data;
• B. parallelizing at least further execution of the software over a plurality of the processing elements by generating and making available to one or more processing elements other than the first processing element (“other processing elements”):
• (i) a block-type object associated with instructions making up at least the portion of the software upon which such further execution is to be effected;
• (ii) one or more data-type objects, each associated with at least the subset of the data to be processed by those associated instructions;
• (iii) one or more task-type objects identifying a block-type object and identifying one or more data-type objects associated with data-type to be processed by the software associated with that block-type object;
• (iv) one or more objects (each, a “thread object”) defining a processing environment in which the data associated with the one or more data objects associated with a said task object are to be processed by the software associated with the block-type object associated with that task-type object.