1. A system on chip (SOC) comprising: a cache; a buffer manager configured to manage a plurality of buffer locations; and a processing core configured to issue a buffer allocation request to the buffer manager to request the buffer manager to allocate one or more buffer locations to the processing core, the buffer manager being further configured to, in response to receiving the buffer allocation request, allocate a first buffer location to the processing core by writing a first buffer pointer associated with the first buffer location to the cache, and the processing core being further configured to obtain the allocation of the first buffer location by reading the first buffer pointer from the cache.