-*- Mode: Text, Spell -*- Notes on porting to the alpha. The main difficulty will be dealing with imprecise exceptions. That can be addressed mostly by just not generating exceptions. Currently, we generate exceptions in the following cases: - guard page for allocation overflow - fixnum+fixnum overflow - internal errors - pseudo-atomic-interrupted - %primitive halt - fp exceptions Related, but not identical, is cleanly handling user interrupts (i.e. signals). We could poll like we plan to on the x86, but I would prefer not taking the performance hit. All the exceptions except for fp exceptions can easily be handled by just explicitly checking for the condition and branching to a save-escape-frame assembly routine if necessary. Fp exceptions can be handled by adding trap barrier instructions. Exactly where and how often depends on the amount of debug info desired. For minimal debug info, at the end of every basic block. For maximal debug info, just after every fp op. For medium, just before every fp op. User interrupts are tricky.