Patent ID: 8301840

Claim:
A method, in a data processing system having at least one physical processor and at least one associated cache memory, for allocating cache resources of the at least one cache memory to virtual processors of the data processing system, comprising: identifying, by a management mechanism of the data processing system, a plurality of high priority virtual processors in the data processing system; determining, by the management mechanism, a percentage of cache lines of the at least one cache memory to be assigned to high priority virtual processors based on the identification of the plurality of high priority virtual processors in the data processing system; and marking, by the management mechanism, a portion of the cache lines in the at least one cache memory as being evictable by only high priority virtual processors based on the determined percentage of cache lines to be assigned to high priority virtual processors, wherein the marked portion of the cache lines cannot be evicted by lower priority virtual processors having a priority lower than the high priority virtual processors.