APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR TRIGGERED PREFETCHING TO IMPROVE I/O AND PRODUCER-CONSUMER WORKLOAD EFFICIENCY

An apparatus and method are described for a triggered prefetch operation. For example, one embodiment of a processor comprises: a first core comprising a first cache to store a first set of cache lines; a second core comprising a second cache to store a second set of cache lines; a cache management circuit to maintain coherency between one or more cache lines in the first cache and the second cache, the cache management circuit to allocate a lock on a first cache line to the first cache; a prefetch circuit comprising a prefetch request buffer to store a plurality of prefetch request entries including a first prefetch request entry associated with the first cache line, the prefetch circuit to cause the first cache line to be prefetched to the second cache in response to an invalidate command detected for the first cache line.