different alpha cpu compatibility issues?

[Eric Ding <ericding applix com>]

Hi all,

I have a question about porting to Alpha.

I notice that there are various types of machines, all of which fall under
the category of "alpha" -- for example, in the config.guess of gcc 2.95.2,
it checks if it's running on alpha vs. alphaev5 vs. alphaev56, etc.

Are there compatibility issues between different alpha boxes?  For example,
for Applixware, the build machine which we currently use for releases is
an EV56 machine, according to /proc/cpuinfo, while another machine which we
use for QA and stuff is a PCA56 machine.  We don't seem to have any
problems running the same software on both machines, but now we've heard
from a few customers who are getting back "Signal illegal instruction"
errors when they try to run our software.  We're in the process of getting
more details, but can anyone hazard a guess on why it would work in some
Alpha boxen but not others, if they have the same version/distribution of
Linux installed?

Thanks,
Eric
-- 
Senior Software Engineer / ericding@applix.com               <><
Applix Linux Division / 112 Turnpike Road / Westboro MA 01581-2842