Method, apparatus, and computer program product embodiments of the invention are disclosed for efficient communication between processor units in a multi-core processor integrated circuit architecture. In example embodiments of the invention, a method comprises: storing with a shared inter-core communication unit in a multi-core processor, first data produced by a producer processor core, in a first token memory located at a first memory address of a memory address space; and connecting with the shared inter-core communication unit, the first token memory to a consumer processor core of the multi-core processor, to load the first data from the first token memory into the consumer processor core, in response to a first-type command from the producer processor core.