I was under the impression that modern patents had to have a clear list of claims but this one has nothing but technobabble and "1 Claim, 64 Drawing Sheets". How was this approved?
The answer, of course, is absolutely nothing at all. If someone wants to force a review, the USPTO actually charges to give a patent a second, more thorough look, effectively double dipping.
It is a profoundly broken system, and people do just push tonnes and tonnes of nonsense patents. This includes the major companies (Apple, Microsoft, Google) who start shoveling patents in the notion that they'll have a warchest of bullshit if push comes to shove.
What is an issue is: 1) the actual claim (last 2 pages) which tries to essentially claim any multi-cpu shared memory computer from the 1960s onwards, and 2) the patent troll trying to claim this is valid