Patent ID: 7877549

Claim:
A method comprising: executing a first software process on a first processor in a multi-processor computing system, wherein the first software process comprises a sequence of instructions that includes a process synchronization kernel call instruction; executing a first operating system (OS) instance on the first processor; executing a process synchronization kernel service of the first OS instance with respect to a resource associated with one or more memory locations of a shared memory when the first processor executes the process synchronization kernel call instruction, wherein the process synchronization kernel service comprises a sequence of instructions that includes a cache coherence instruction, wherein the shared memory is shared among the first processor and at least one other processor in the multi-processor computing system; and executing, with the first processor, the cache coherence instruction that is included in the sequence of instructions of the process synchronization kernel service, wherein when the first processor executes the cache coherence instruction, the first processor outputs signals to processors in the multi-processor computing system other than the first processor, wherein the signals enforce cache coherence among caches associated with the processors in the multi-processor computing system other than the first processor with respect to the one or more memory locations associated with the resource.