AbstractThis paper presents an outline of a prototype intelligent link system proposed to combine “data transmission” and “data processing” and its software system. The generative program and its processing scheme are reported in detail. The intelligent link is n pairs of a general‐purpose pipeline processing system. It is an n‐stage one‐dimensional line of segments which consists of a transmission line and a processor. Each segment processes received data by the programs which tag along with its data. In order to decrease the system processing time and the processor idle time, fewer bits are employed to represent a program for the information transmission. Here we use a transition matrix method to describe transition of the operations in a program. First, we introduce the matrix properties and discuss applications of the matrix representation for generative programs. Secondly, we study how fewer bits can be used to represent a matrix and, as a result, find that less than 70% of the bits required to represent a matrix directly suffices in the pr