AVOIDING MEMORY ACCESS LATENCY BY RETURNING HIT-MODIFIED WHEN HOLDING NON-MODIFIED DATA

A microprocessor is configured to communicate with other agents on a system bus and includes a cache memory and a bus interface unit coupled to the cache memory and to the system bus. The bus interface unit receives from another agent coupled to the system bus a transaction to read data from a memory address, determines whether the cache memory is holding the data at the memory address in an exclusive state (or a shared state in certain configurations), and asserts a hit-modified signal on the system bus and provides the data on the system bus to the other agent when the cache memory is holding the data at the memory address in an exclusive state. Thus, the delay of an access to the system memory by the other agent is avoided.