Patent ID: 7395380

Claim:
A method of snooping the cache memories of a plurality of snooping masters connected to a bus having logic, comprising at least two of said snooping masters having a cache memory, and wherein the cache memories of some, but less than all of said cache memories, have the data needed by an originating snooping master and with said needed data marked as updated, and wherein main memory has addresses for all data which is connected to said bus, including the steps of: querying only the cache memory of those snooping masters which have the requested data through said data bus; and collecting all designated non-originating responses at all of said non-originating snooping masters that have been queried replying through said bus to said originating snooping master and creating a non-speculative snooping mask and, if a non-originating snooping master has the requested data marked as updated, said non-originating snooping master returning said updated data directly or indirectly to the originating snooping master or to the main memory, or both through said bus, and thereafter end snooping without checking the validity of the snoop mask and data.