METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ROUTING MESSAGE PACKETS

A message packet router is describes that performs the functions of determining if a message packet is addressed to circuitry associated with the router, of routing message packets to their destination if possible and of storing message packets that cannot be routed on because of circuit conflicts. The router also provides additional functions of merging message packets addressed to the same destination, of saving the state of the router at each significant point in the message routing cycle, and of running the entire routing cycle backwards. This later feature makes it possible to broadcast message packets selectively to certain processors in the array.