Method and apparatus for performing distributed processing in a multi-processing unit environment. A first processing unit modifies a complex operation to provide an operational request packet comprising a corresponding simplex operation and remainder. The packet is communicated to a second processing unit which processes the packet to arrive at a result for the complex operation, preferably by arriving at a result for the simplex operation and combining this result with the remainder. In this way, inter-processor operations can be efficiently encoded and distributed to meet the requirements of a given architecture. Preferably, the first processing unit determines the remainder by separately arriving at the result for the complex operation. The complex operation is preferably characterized as a mathematical operation on a non-power of two operand (e.g., 30), and the simplex operation is characterized as a mathematical operation on a power of two operand (e.g., 32).