
5.3 Design Space for Snooping Protocols 301
PrRd
PrWr/—
PrWr/BusRdX
BusRdX/Flush
/ \ BusRdX/Flush
i
/ \ I
\ I
\ I
\ I
x
N
BusRdX/Flush' /
/ /
\ / /
PrRd/—
\ ' '
BusRd/Flush' ι / '
i '
FIGURE 5.15 State transition diagram for the Illinois MESI protocol. MESI stands
for the modified (dirty), exclusive, shared, and invalid states, respectively. The notation is
the same as that in Figure 5.13. The
E
state helps reduce bus traffic for sequential programs
where data is not shared. Whenever feasible, the Illinois version of the MESI protocol makes
caches, rather than main memory, supply data for BusRd and BusRdX transactions. Since
multiple processor ...