Patent ID: 8543729

Claim:
A method for receiving packet data by means of a data processing system having a plurality of processing cores and supporting a network interface device and a set of at least two untrusted software domains, each untrusted software domain: (a) carrying a plurality of data flows; (b) supporting at least two delivery channels between the network interface device and the respective untrusted software domain; and (c) being operable to perform receive processing of received packet data at a processing core of the data processing system, the method comprising: receiving at the network interface device packet data that is part of a particular data flow; selecting in dependence on one or more characteristics of the packet data a delivery channel of a particular one of the untrusted software domains, said delivery channel being associated with a particular one of the processing cores of the data processing system; and mapping the incoming packet data into the selected delivery channel such that receive processing of the packet data is performed in the untrusted software domain by the same processing core that performed receive processing for preceding packets of that data flow.