Patent ID: 7360217

Claim:
In a processing engine comprising a plurality of tribes, each tribe comprising a plurality of streams and context registers, each stream capable of executing a thread of execution, a method implemented by the processing engine, comprising: detecting that a first destination tribe is full; in response to detecting that the first destination tribe is full, migrating a first thread of execution from a first tribe into a first transient buffer, the first thread of execution destined to be migrated into the first destination tribe; migrating a second thread of execution from the first destination tribe into a second transient buffer, thereby causing the first destination tribe to no longer be full, wherein the second thread of execution is destined to be migrated to a second destination tribe; migrating the first thread of execution from the first transient buffer into the first destination tribe; migrating a third thread of execution from the second destination tribe into the first transient buffer; and migrating the second thread of execution from the second transient buffer into the second destination tribe.