Patent ID: 8285974

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a queue to store a plurality of entries; a dispatch order structure corresponding to the queue, the dispatch order structure comprising indicator entries to store a plurality of indicators associated with a plurality of different pairs of entries of the queue to indicate a dispatch order of the entries, wherein at least one of the indicators indicates the relative age for the corresponding different pairs of entries in the queue such that respective indicators of the plurality of indicators of the dispatch order structure have either a first value or a second value, the first value indicating an entry is older than another entry and the second value indicating the entry is younger than the another entry, wherein the dispatch order structure comprises a representation of a partial matrix and masked duplicate entries, the partial matrix to store a portion of a matrix of rows and columns and to mask duplicate entries of the matrix; and a controller to interface with the queue and the dispatch order structure, the controller to update the dispatch order structure in response to an operation to insert a new entry in the queue.