Patent ID: 8694732

Claim:
In a data processing system having a processor with a cache hierarchy that includes one or more caches, a method comprising: initiating an eviction of a data region from a region coherence array (RCA) without requiring eviction of lines of the data region from the cache hierarchy of the processor, wherein the RCA is a set-associative array associated with the processor but is separate from the one or more caches of the processor and wherein lines from the evicted data region of the RCA still reside in the one or more caches of the processor; determining a line count pertaining to the data region; in response to the eviction of the data region from the RCA and the data region having a non-zero line count, adding the line count to a corresponding count value within a Region Victim Hash (RVH), wherein said count value is indexed by an address of the data region; and resolving via the RVH an external snoop request for a data region indexed with a non-zero count.