System and method for implementing an enhanced hover state with active prefetches

A system and method for implementing an enhanced hover state with active prefetches. According to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, a snooper in a processing unit receives a system-wide update complete operation indicating a completion of a storage-modifying operation targeting a particular address, where the storage-modifying operation results in a modified first cache line in a first cache memory. The snooper determines if a second cache memory held a second cache line associated with the particular address prior to receiving the system-wide update complete operation. If so, the snooper issues a prefetch request for a copy of the modified first cache line to replace the second cache line in the second cache memory. The snooper updates the second cache memory with a copy of the modified first cache line.