1. An integrated circuit (IC) comprising: a multi-processor system including a primary processor and a plurality of pipelined secondary processors, each of the secondary processors comprising a system interface for communicating with an upstream processor and a downstream processor, communication with the primary processor by at least one of the secondary processors using its system interface is by way of another secondary processor as its upstream processor, the at least one secondary processor including a register directly accessible by the primary processor, the register containing status information for tasks executed by the at least one secondary processor, a communication path other than the at least one secondary processor's system interface used for upstream communication is used for the status information to bypass the upstream processor, the status information for use by the primary processor in allocating data to one or more memory blocks and determining whether or not to assign another task to the at least one secondary processor.