<p>A method and apparatus for ordering, synchronizing and scheduling work in a multi-core network services processor is provided. Each piece of work is identified by a tag indicates how the work is to be synchronized and ordered. Throughput is increased by processing work having different tags in parallel on different processor cores. Packet processing can be broken up into different phases, each phase having a different tag dependent on ordering and synchronization constraints for the phase. A tag switch operation initiated by a core switches a tag dependent on the phase. A dedicated tag switch bus minimizes latency for the tag switch operation.</p>
