Piggy-back snoops for non-coherent memory transactions within distributed processing systems

Abstract

Piggy-back snoops are used for non-coherent memory transactions in distributed processing systems. Coherent and non-coherent memory transactions are received from a plurality of processing cores within a distributed processing system. Non-coherent snoop information for the non-coherent memory transactions is combined with coherent snoop information for the coherent memory transactions to form expanded snoop messages. The expanded snoop messages are then output to a snoop bus interconnect during snoop cycles for the distributed processing system. As such, when the processing cores monitor the snoop bus interconnect, the processing cores receive the non-coherent snoop information along with coherent snoop information within the same snoop cycle. While this piggy-backing of non-coherent snoop information with coherent snoop information uses an expanded snoop bus interconnect, usage of the coherent snoop bandwidth is significantly reduced thereby improving overall performance of the distributed processing system.