| 摘要 |
<p>A bit-stream machine is provided for transmitting and/or receiving a bit stream having a hierarchical format structure in which a plurality of single-level formats, each composed of a plurality of fields made up of one or more bits, interdepend in the manner of a tree-structured hierarchy of multiple levels with each lower-level format in that hierarchy specifying the structure of a corresponding field of a higher lever format of the hierarchy. The bit-stream machine comprises a bus (11), a plurality of bit-processing devices (40 to 46) operative to source/sink bits to/from the bus (11), and an orchestrator (13) for orchestrating the operation of the bit-processing devices (40 to 46) in accordance with an overall format program that represents a pre-determined hierarchical format to be transmitted or received. The overall format program is made up of a plurality of programs each representing a respective single-level format of the hierarchical format. Each single-level format program comprises bit-processing instructions and switch instructions, the orchestrator (13) being responsive to the bit-processing instructions to directly instruct the bit-processing devices (40 to 46) and to the to switch instructions to switch to running a different single-level format program. The orchestrator (11) notionally comprises a respective format engine for each single-level format of the hierarchy.</p> |
