Methods, systems, and articles of manufacture for communicating with an I/O processor (IOP) are provided. Polling of message queue pointers is utilized to detect the occurrence of certain message queue related events, rather than rely on interrupts generated by the IOP. The polling may decrease the disruptive effects of IOP generated interrupts. In an effort to minimize the latency associated with detecting IOP related events, the polling may be initiated frequently by an operating system task dispatcher. In an effort to minimize context switches, the task dispatcher may schedule the processing of upstream messages detected while polling to coincide with naturally occurring task swaps.