Patent ID: 7752413

Claim:
A method comprising: reserving a first portion of a cache in a processor for an inbox, wherein the inbox is associated with a first thread being executed by the processor; receiving a packet from a second thread, wherein the packet includes an access request; and using inbox control circuitry for the inbox to process the received packet and determine whether to grant the access request included in the packet, wherein using inbox control circuitry for the inbox to determine whether to grant the access request included in the packet comprises: using an allocation register for the inbox to determine whether the inbox includes memory space which is unreserved and which is sufficient to grant the access request; and reserving a portion of the memory space in the inbox to fulfill the access request if the first portion of the cache includes unreserved memory space sufficient to grant the access request, wherein reserving a portion of the memory space in the inbox to fulfill the access request comprises increasing a value stored in the allocation register to indicate the portion of the memory space which is reserved.