Patent ID: 7835373

Claim:
A method of virtual bridging between a first device adapter and a second device adapter in a data processing system, the method comprising: receiving data from the first device adapter and first transferring the data to a buffer provided to the first device adapter from a first device driver, wherein the buffer has a first bus address associated with a virtual address of the buffer in memory, and wherein the first device adapter uses the first bus address to access the buffer to transfer the data into the buffer; from a virtual bridge, communicating a second bus address of the buffer to a second device driver associated with the second device adapter, wherein the second bus address of the buffer is associated with the virtual address of the buffer in memory; and second transferring the data from the buffer to the second device adapter using the second bus address, whereby the virtual bridge maps an input queue of the first device driver to an output queue of the second device driver without requiring the second device driver to map the virtual address of the buffer to the second bus address.