Patent attributes
A computing system having at least one cluster. Each cluster has only one master server. The master server has at least one general processing unit, a relatively high speed data input adapted to send and receive data, a relatively low speed data input adapted to send and receive data, and a buffer memory adapted to buffer data between the relatively high speed data input and the relatively low speed data input. Each cluster also has at least one slave server, which has at least one general processing unit, and a relatively low speed data input adapted to send and receive data, the relatively low speed data input having data communication with the relatively low speed data input of the master server. In this manner, the relatively high speed data input, which tends to be very expensive, is present only in the master server, and is used for the high speed transfer of large amounts of data. However, the master server sends the data out to the slave servers on lower speed connections. Thus, there is a blend of both high speed and low speed data communication within the system, and the data is economically processed in clusters within the system.