Multiple stores to the load's memory address may be present in the store queue. To handle this case, the store queue is priority encoded to select the "latest" store that is logically earlier than the load in program order. The determination of which store is "latest" can be achieved by attaching some sort of timestamp to the instructions as they are fetched and decoded, or alternatively by knowing the relative position (slot) of the load with respect to the oldest and newest stores within the store queue.