Patent ID: 7640399

Claim:
A system comprising: a plurality of processing entities, wherein each of the plurality of processing entities comprises a processor core; a shared cache, the shared cache being shared by the plurality of processing entities, wherein the shared cache is a victim cache; and circuitry configured to manage a replacement policy of said shared cache, wherein the circuitry is configured to: identify a data entry of the shared cache as a candidate for replacement; modify a status of how recently the data entry has been used to indicate a more recently used status, responsive to detecting said data entry corresponds to data which is shared by two or more of the plurality of processing entities; and maintain an indication as to which processing entity of the plurality of processing entities caused an initial allocation of data into the shared cache, and wherein the circuitry detects a particular data item is shared by determining an access to a given data item stored in the shared cache corresponds to a processing entity other than a processing entity which caused an allocation of the given data item.