Abstract: Techniques are disclosed for identifying data streams in a processor that are likely to benefit from data prefetching. A prefetcher receives at least a first request in a plurality of requests to pre-fetch data from a stream in a plurality of streams. The prefetcher assigns a confidence level to the the first request based on an amount of confirmations observed in the stream. The request is in a confident state if the confidence level exceeds a specified value. The first request is in a non-confident state if the confidence level does not exceed the specified value. Doing so allows a memory controller to determine whether to drop the at least the first request based on the confidence level and a memory resource utilization threshold.