A method and apparatus for a coherence mechanism that supports a distributed memory programming model in which processors each maintain their own memory area, and communicate data between them. A hierarchical programming model is supported, which uses distributed memory semantics on top of shared memory nodes. Coherence is maintained globally, but caching is restricted to a local region of the machine (a "node" or "caching domain"). A directory cache is held in an on-chip cache and is multi-banked, allowing very high transaction throughput. Directory associativity allows the directory cache to map contents of all caches concurrently. References off node are converted to non-allocating references, allowing the same access mechanism (a regular load or store) to be used for both for intra-node and extra-node references. Stores (Puts) to remote caches automatically update the caches instead of invalidating the caches, allowing producer/consumer data sharing to occur through cache instead of through main memory.