Offloading data coherence operations from a primary processing unit(s) executing instantiated code responsible for data coherence in a shared-cache cluster to a data coherence offload engine reduces resource consumption and allows for efficient sharing of data in accordance with the data coherence protocol. Some of the data coherence operations, such as consulting and maintaining a directory, generating messages, and writing a data unit can be performed by a data coherence offload engine. The data coherence offload engine indicates availability of the data unit in the memory to the appropriate instantiated code. Hence, the instantiated code (the corresponding primary processing unit) is no longer burdened with some of the work load of data coherence operations. Migration of tasks from a primary processing unit(s) to data coherence offload engines allows for efficient retrieval and writing of a requested data unit.