Craig Latta wrote:
> Hi Andreas--
> 
>> From the way you describe it, it sounds like a GCC problem. Have you
>> tried compiling with -O0 to see if this works?
> 
>      Aha, that works. Thanks! I'd love to hear details about why
> optimization messes things up in this situation (I haven't been paying
> attention to that issue so far).

I can't say what exactly the problem is but since the VM uses generated 
code it often utilizes patterns that nobody would ever use in 
hand-written code. At times, this exposes edge-cases in the optimizer 
(global CSE is a good candidate) and it's neither the first nor the last 
time we've seen such effects (Ian has reported various bugs to the GCC 
people). I would also expect that the PPC backend has seen much less 
attention recently ;-)

Cheers,
   - Andreas