Methods and apparatus for accelerating VM-to-VM Network Traffic using CPU cache. A virtual queue manager (VQM) manages data that is to be kept in VM-VM shared data buffers in CPU cache. The VQM stores a list of VM-VM allow entries identifying data transfers between VMs that may use VM-VM cache “fast-path” forwarding. Packets are sent from VMs to the VQM for forwarding to destination VMs. Indicia in the packets (e.g., in a tag or header) is inspected to determine whether a packet is to be forwarded via a VM-VM cache fast path or be forwarded via a virtual switch. The VQM determines the VM data already in the CPU cache domain while concurrently coordinating with the data to and from the external shared memory, and also ensures data coherency between data kept in cache and that which is kept in shared memory.