Patent ID: 7137116

Claim:
A method of performing a task on a computer system having a cache, wherein the task comprises a plurality of sub-tasks, the method comprising: (a) instantiating a plurality of stages, the plurality of stages comprising at least one stage for each of the plurality of sub-tasks, each stage comprising: a holding area; and a scheduling policy (b) receiving a plurality of requests for the task; (c) for each of the requests, storing in a work packet data for performing a subtask of the task; (d) storing each work packet in the holding area of the at least one stage for the sub-task; (e) executing the sub-task on each of the work packets in the holding area in accordance with the scheduling policy of the at least one stage for the sub-task while refraining from executing other sub-tasks of the task, thereby maintaining locality of instructions and data in the cache; and (f) repeating steps c, d and e for each sub-task of the task until all of the sub-tasks of the task are completed for each request.