Multi-threaded data processing management system

A data processing management system comprising:

• a plurality of data inputs;
• a plurality of data outputs;
• a plurality of data processing means;
• a data storage means;
• and
• a control means
• wherein, the control means comprises:
• means for routing data from each said data input to a selected one of said data outputs through a selected one of said data processing means in a plurality of routing operations;
• means for causing each said data processing means through which the data is routed to perform a data processing operation on the data;
• means for repeatedly determining which routing operations, from a plurality of routing operations, and which data processing operations, from a plurality of data processing operations, are capable of being performed;
• and
• means for commencing execution of the routing operations and the data processing operations that said means for determining which operations can be performed has determined can be performed.

A method of independently executing separate instruction threads, wherein data that are to be processed based on each instruction thread is provided from one of a plurality of data inputs and data produced as a result of the processing of the instruction thread is forwarded to one of a plurality of data outputs, said method comprising the steps of:

• for each instruction thread, for the next processing step to be executed in the thread, assembling a thread microinstruction that includes:
• an opcode that indicates the processing step to be performed;
• and at least one operand describing or defining the data on which the processing step is to be performed and the resources required to execute the instruction;
• for the plurality of thread microinstructions, establishing a relative order of priority in which the microinstructions are to be executed;
• for each thread microinstruction, determining if the resources are available to execute the microinstruction based on the data for the microinstruction that defines the required resources and a check of the availability of the resources so that a determination is made if the microinstruction is capable of execution;
• for the thread microinstructions capable of execution, determining which of the thread microinstructions has the highest priority;
• and
• for the thread microinstruction with the highest priority, based on the opcode of the thread microinstruction:
• retrieving the data to be processed from a selective one of the data inputs;
• processing the data in a data processing means;
• and/or forwarding the data to selected one of the data outputs.