Novel snoop filter for filtering snoop requests

A snoop filtering method for supporting cache coherency in a computing environment having multiple processing units, each processing unit implementing a corresponding snoop filter apparatus, said method comprising:

• receiving, at a plurality of inputs, a snoop request from a plurality of memory writing sources in said computing environment, each input corresponding to a memory writing source of said plurality of memory writing sources;
• providing at each of said plurality of inputs a snoop filter means for concurrently filtering received respective snoop requests from a corresponding memory writing source;
• and,
• each snoop filter means implementing one or more parallel operating sub-filter elements for processing received snoop requests and forwarding a subset thereof to said associated processing unit,
• whereby as a result of said concurrent filtering, a number of snoop requests forwarded to a processing unit is significantly reduced thereby increasing performance of said computing environment.