A technique for short-circuiting normal read-copy update (RCU) grace period computations in the presence of expedited RCU grace periods. Both normal and expedited RCU grace period processing may be periodically performing to respectively report normal and expedited quiescent states on behalf of CPUs in a set of CPUs until all of the CPUs have respectively reported normal or expedited quiescent states so that the normal and expedited grace periods may be respectively ended. The expedited grace periods are of shorter duration than the normal grace periods. Responsive to a condition indicating that the normal RCU grace period processing can be short-circuited by the expedited RCU grace period processing, the expedited RCU grace period processing may report both expedited quiescent states and normal quiescent states on behalf of the same CPUs in the set of CPUs.