Patent ID: 7630376

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: one or more ordered lock managers configured to receive lock requests, to receive instruction requests corresponding to said lock requests, and to perform said received instructions corresponding to said lock requests in the order said lock requests are requested and after an immediately prior lock request in the order said lock requests are received is released, wherein said instruction requests include a gather instruction for a processed packet processed by one of the plurality of packet processing packet engines; a plurality of packet processing engines, each of the plurality of packet processing engines configured to process packets distributed to it and to communicate one or more instructions to one or more of said one or more ordered lock managers for each said packet distributed to it; and a distributor configured to receive packets, make locking requests corresponding to said received packets to said one or more ordered lock managers, and to distribute said received packets to the plurality of packet processing engines; wherein said instruction requests include a gather instruction for a processed packet processed by one of the plurality of packet processing engines.