A system and method can support efficient packet processing in a network environment. The system can comprise a direct memory access (DMA) resources pool that comprises one or more of DMA resources. Furthermore, the system can use a plurality of packet buffers in a memory, wherein each said DMA resource can point to a chain of packet buffers in the memory. Here, the chain of packet buffers can be implemented based on either a linked list data structure and/or a linear array data structure. Additionally, each said DMA resource allows a packet processing thread to access the chain of packet buffers using a pre-assigned thread key.