Patent ID: 8327082

Claim:
A method of performing a snoop look-up operation in a system having a first cache and a first processor, wherein the first processor generates requests to the first cache for data, comprising: loading a snoop queue with snoop requests, wherein a fullness of the snoop queue is a measure of how many snoop requests are in the snoop queue; determining if the fullness of the snoop queue exceeds a predetermined threshold; performing a snoop look-up operation in the first cache if the fullness of the snoop queue exceeds the predetermined threshold, wherein the snoop look-up operation is based on a snoop request from the snoop queue corresponding to an entry in the snoop queue; and if the fullness of the snoop queue does not exceed the predetermined threshold and there is at least one snoop request in the snoop queue, waiting to perform a snoop look-up operation until an idle access request cycle from the first processor to the first cache occurs; and performing the snoop look-up operation in the first cache upon the idle access request cycle from the first processor.