The MESI protocol

The MESI protocol

The MESI protocol is a formal mechanism for controlling cache coherency using snooping techniques. Its acronym stands for modified, exclusive, shared, invalid and refers to the states that cached data can take. Transition between the states is controlled by memory accesses and bus snooping activity. This information appears on special signal pins during bus transactions.

The MESI diagram is generic and shows the general opera-tion of the protocol. There are four states that describe the cache contents and its coherence with system memory:

Invalid                   The target address is not cached.

Shared                   The target address is in the cache and also in at

least one other. It is coherent with system memory.

Exclusive               The target address is in the cache but the data is coherent with system memory.

Modified                The target address is in the cache, but the contents has been modified and is not coherent with system memory. No other cache in the system has this data. 

The movement from one state is governed by memory actions, cache hits and misses and snooping activity. For example, if a processor needs to write data to a memory address that has a write-back policy and cache coherency enabled as part of its page descriptors — controlled by the WIM bits — and causes a cache miss, the processor will move from an invalid state to a modified state by performing a ‘read with intent to modify’ bus cycle.

The MESI protocol is widely used in multiprocessor de-signs, for example, in the Futurebus+ interconnection bus. The MPC601 uses this protocol.