In one embodiment, the present invention includes a method for determining whether a packet received in an input/output (I/O) circuit of a node is destined for the node and if so, providing the packet to an egress queue of the I/O circuit and determining whether one or more packets are present in an ingress queue of the I/O circuit and if so, providing a selected packet to a first or second output register according to a global schedule that is independent of traffic flow. Other embodiments are described and claimed.