4.11.4 Exception Barrier

Format:

EXCB

! Memory format

Operation:

{EXCB does not appear to issue until completion of all exceptions and dependencies on the Floating-point Control Register (FPCR) from prior instructions.}

Exceptions:

None

Instruction mnemonics:

EXCB

Exception Barrier

Qualifiers:

None

Description:

The EXCB instruction allows software to guarantee that in a pipelined implementation, all pre- vious instructions have completed any behavior related to exceptions or rounding modes before any instructions after the EXCB are issued.

In particular, all changes to the Floating-point Control Register (FPCR) are guaranteed to have been made, whether or not there is an associated exception. Also, all potential floating-point exceptions and integer overflow exceptions are guaranteed to have been taken. EXCB is thus a superset of TRAPB.

If a floating-point exception occurs for which trapping is enabled, the EXCB instruction acts like a fault. In this case, the value of the Program Counter reported to the program may be the address of the EXCB instruction (or earlier) but is never the address of an instruction follow- ing the EXCB.

The relationship between EXCB and the FPCR is described in Section 4.7.8.1.

4–138Alpha Architecture Handbook

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Compaq ECQD2KCTE manual Exception Barrier, Excb