Distributed software for distributed hardware

Communication system designs are moving toward a highly distributed control environment. Repetitive functions, such as digit or character processing, will be accomplished by “front end” microprocessors while file management and overall system control is performed by “rear end” processors. These two processing levels will be interconnected by an operating system spanning both processor levels and by fast communications hardware. This highly distributed processing environment requires communications software to be processor-transparent, thereby permitting processors and microprocessors to communicate efficiently and permitting a single software function to span both types of machines.