the disclosure relates to a method and apparatus to efficiently address livelock in a multi - processor system . in one embodiment , the disclosure is directed to a method for preventing a system bus livelock in a system having a plurality of processors communicating respectively through a plurality of bus masters to a plurality of io controllers across a system bus by : receiving at an mmio state machine a plurality of snoop commands issued from the plurality of processors , identifying a first processor and a second processor from the plurality of processors , each of the first processor and the second processor having a first number of snoop commands in the input queue and a second number of responses in the output queue , the first number and the second number exceeding a threshold ; issuing a burst prevention response to the first processor and the second process .