In one embodiment, an apparatus includes a requester node to transmit a request for data in a memory. The apparatus also includes a service node that includes the memory. The service node receives the request for the data, wherein the service node is to set a congestion flag in response to the request sent back to the requester node upon determining that access to the data is congested. The requester node is to freeze priority updates for the data upon receipt of the congestion flag.