1. A hardware processor comprising: a plurality of virtual processing elements; an on-chip memory; an access list; and a comparator coupled to the memory and the access list, wherein in response to an instruction from one of the virtual processing elements to access a memory location in the memory, the comparator compares a first virtual processing identification associated with the instruction to a second virtual processing identification stored in the access list and grants access to the virtual processing element that generated the instruction to read from or write to the memory location if the first virtual processing element identification is equal to the second virtual processing element identification.