Patent ID: 7685373

Claim:
A computer system comprising: a bus and a plurality of snooping masters attached thereto to communicate with each other thereover; said bus being configured to receive snoop requests from an originating snooping master, deliver received snoop requests to query other non-originating snooping masters, and communicate snoop results from the non-originating snooping masters back to the originating snooping master; at least two of said snooping masters having snoopable cache memory, any of which can be marked as updated; main memory attached to and in communication with said bus having storage for all data and addresses associated therewith used by all of said snooping masters; logic to collect all designated non-originating responses and create a non-speculative snoop mask to select which other non-originating snooping master or masters which have updated data to snoop for a given address, said bus including logic to direct snoop requests to only the non-originating snooping masters as enabled by a snoop mask, and to return to the originating snooping master directly or indirectly, or to the main memory, or both, any updated data from a non-originating snooping master, and thereafter end snooping without checking validity of the snoop mask and data.