1. An apparatus for coordinating buffer use among tasks in a processing system, wherein the processing system includes a plurality of hardware nodes, wherein a task is executed on one or more of the hardware nodes, wherein a consuming task uses input buffers to obtain data and wherein a producing task uses output buffers to provide data, the apparatus comprising a task manager for indicating the status of the buffers, the task manager including an output buffer available indicator associated with an output buffer; an input buffer available indicator associated with an input buffer; and a status indicator for indicating that a task is ready to run based on a combination of the output buffer available indicator and the input buffer available indicator.