Patent ID: 6976100

Claim:
A method for communicating between a processor complex having one or more processors and a plurality of input/output (I/O) processors using at least one message queue associated with each I/O processor, the method comprising, for each I/O processor: polling a set of pointers to the associated at least one message queue, wherein the set of pointers comprises a first pointer indicating a location of a most recent message posted to the at least one message queue by the I/O processor and a second pointer indicating a location of a most recent message processed by the processor complex; determining the I/O processor has posted at least one message to the at least one message queue since the most recent message was processed by the processor complex, if values of the first and second pointers are not equal; and if the values of the first and second pointers are not equal, processing, at the processor complex, the at least one message posted by the I/O processor in conjunction with a task swap in which execution is switched from one processor to another processor of the processor complex.