1. A packet processor, comprising: a packet memory; and a packet memory manager in communication with the packet memory to allocate resources in the packet memory in accordance with a mapped hierarchy between pages, wherein each page represents a fixed amount of memory, pools assigned to a subset of the pages, and banks assigned to a subset of the pools, wherein each bank represents a set of memory resources, wherein the packet memory manager assigns selected pages to a selected pool, which distributes the selected pages to the banks associated with the selected pool, such that the mapped hierarchy provides load distribution within the packet memory.