Patent ID: 8015379

Claim:
A method, in a data processing system, for performing a look-ahead operation in a wake-and-go mechanism, the method comprising: responsive to detecting instructions indicating that a thread is waiting for data at a target address, issuing, by the wake-and-go mechanism, a look-ahead load command on a system bus to read a data value from the target address; performing, by the wake-and-go mechanism, a comparison operation to determine whether the data value at the target address indicates that the data for which the thread is waiting is at the target address; in response to the comparison resulting in a determination that the data for which the thread is waiting is not at the target address, populating a wake-and-go storage array with the target address; in response to the comparison resulting in a determination that the data for which the thread is waiting is at the target address, issuing, by the wake-and-go mechanism, a load command on the system bus to read the data value from the target address with data exclusivity; and responsive to the wake-and-go mechanism obtaining the lock for the target address, holding, by the wake-and-go mechanism, the lock for the thread.