Multi-processor data processing systems harness the collective computation power of multitude of processors. A memory system is central to a multi-processor system and must be scaleable in order to provide sufficient bandwidth to each processor while sharing data between the multiple processors. For certain applications, an efficient means of sharing data is critical to effective collaboration between the threads running on the multiple processors.
Most data blocks that are written by a CPU tend not to be read or written by other agents/processors shortly after ownership has been obtained. However, some blocks may be very heavily shared in short periods of time, if the blocks are being used to synchronize multiple threads of execution. Communication or synchronization latency overheads can be one factor in determining the scalability of a multi-threaded workload on a multi-processor system, like a chip multi-processor.