Abstract: A memoryless communications adapter for communicating between the nodes of a distributed parallel computer network, each node including a non-shared program memory coupled to the memoryless communications adapter which interfaces the network. An embodiment of the present invention advantageously provides an adapter that can manipulate queues and matching tables efficiently in hardware and provide a high-level object view of queues and matching in the context of communication between nodes. Preferably, the Queue manipulation logic, Match Table manipulation logic and the Sequence Table manipulation logic are implemented in the adapter hardware which does not keep any state or resources in it that depend on the size of the system or the number of queues/tables instantiated. The actual states of these objects may be kept in the program memory, so that the adapter hardware is memoryless.