1. A method for operating a plurality of buffers in a random access memory coupled to a processor, the method comprising: storing in the random access memory (RAM) a plurality of descriptors each containing a base address, at least one address pointer and a size to define a corresponding one of the plurality of buffers in the RAM; and transferring data in any one of the plurality of buffers by the processor using a buffer-address-computation instruction of the processor, wherein the processor executes the buffer-address-computation instruction by: computing a read or write address for circular addressing of a location within a selected one of the plurality buffers from the base address field, pointer fields and the size field in the corresponding descriptor; determining if the buffer is full or empty; and indicating when the buffer is full or empty.