A computer system having a plurality of processing nodes interconnected by
a first point-to-point architecture is described. Each processing node
has a cache memory associated therewith. A probe filtering unit is
operable to receive probes corresponding to memory lines from the
processing nodes and to transmit the probes only to selected ones of the
processing nodes with reference to probe filtering information. The probe
filtering information is representative of states associated with
selected ones of the cache memories.