Patent ID: 8769549

Claim:
A method comprising: executing a graphical program, a producer program, and a consumer program on a computer system, wherein the graphical program includes a plurality of nodes that visually indicate functionality of the graphical program, wherein the graphical program executes within a graphical program execution environment, wherein the producer program executes externally from the graphical program and the graphical program execution environment, and wherein the graphical program execution environment is one or more programs, including a graphical program execution engine; wherein the graphical program executes via the graphical program execution engine to receive a reference to a block of memory allocated by the producer program externally from the graphical program and to pass the reference to the consumer program, wherein the block of memory is external to the graphical program and the graphical program execution environment, and wherein the reference enables at least one node of the plurality of nodes to natively access the block of memory; wherein the consumer program executes to: access data stored in the block of memory allocated by the producer program; and after accessing the data, asynchronously notify the graphical program execution environment to cause the block of memory to be released; wherein the graphical program execution environment executes to notify the producer program that the block of memory is no longer in use in response to the consumer program notifying the graphical program execution environment.