Hello, I wrote:

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Yes, on some implementations there can be other conditions that
make a decrementer exception go away; there is no contradiction
here (thankfully).  My wording was sloppy.

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Some CPUs have the DEC exceptions basically edge triggered (yeah I know

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for example?

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it sucks). That's why, among others, the IRQ soft-disable code has code
to re-trigger DEC exceptions ASAP (by setting it to 1.. note that we
could probably use 0 here, we've been a bit conservative).

    Yeah, the classic decrementer is programmed off-by-one.

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I'm not 100% certain... Paulus thinks all the old 6xx are like that, and
maybe POWER4. If I look at the oldest BookIV I can find (the 601), it

    From the "PowerPC Operating Environment Architecture" that I've already 
quoated t follows that POWER4-compatible decremented exception *must* be edge 
triggered.

    ... and cleared when delivered.

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says that an exception is generated when the MSB transitions from 0 to
1. It's not clear wether the exception sticks while that bit is 1 or is
indeed considered as an "edge" event that gets cleared as soon as
delivered.

WBR, Sergei