Patent ID: 8533436

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a first instruction for decoding in a first core of a processor and determining whether contention is predicted with respect to the first instruction; and if no contention is predicted executing the first instruction in the first core, and if contention is predicted obtaining data associated with the first instruction in the first core and sending a remote execution request with the obtained data to a selected remote agent for execution of the first instruction, the prediction based at least in part on whether a contention vector of an entry of a directory associated with the obtained data indicates that a plurality of cores sought to atomically access the obtained data during a historical window including a first time period and a second time period, the contention vector having a plurality of core fields each associated with a core, each core field including a first indicator to indicate access of a cacheline via an atomic operation by the associated core within the first time period and a second indicator to indicate access of the cacheline via an atomic operation by the associated core within the second time period.