Patent ID: 7668186

Claim:
A buffer management system for use with a data processing system comprising: a plurality of buffers, wherein each buffer is represented by one token, wherein each said token specifies an address of an associated buffer and further specifies metadata describing a data type of contents of the associated buffer; a plurality of first-in-first-out (FIFO) memories, wherein each said FIFO memory is associated with a stage of a data processing pipeline and is configured to store at least one of said tokens indicating that the buffer corresponding to each token stored within the plurality of FIFO memories is not empty, wherein at least one stage of the data processing pipeline comprises at least a first FIFO memory storing tokens corresponding to a first data type and a second FIFO memory storing tokens corresponding to a second data type, wherein a number of the plurality of FIFO memories is dependent upon a number of data types processed by the buffer management system; and control logic configured to determine a state for at least one selected buffer according to said token associated with the selected buffer, wherein said token associated with the selected buffer is obtained from a source FIFO memory and transferred to a target FIFO memory, wherein each FIFO memory is correlated with a buffer state and said target FIFO memory is selected to indicate the state of the selected buffer, and wherein each token is persisted within a FIFO memory, and not destroyed, during operation of the buffer management system.