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The bytecode in a Scheme procedure is interpreted by a virtual machine (VM). Each thread has its own instantiation of the VM. The virtual machine executes the sequence of instructions in a procedure.
Each VM instruction starts by indicating which operation it is, and then follows by encoding its source and destination operands. Each procedure declares that it has some number of local variables, including the function arguments. These local variables form the available operands of the procedure, and are accessed by index.
The local variables for a procedure are stored on a stack. Calling a procedure typically enlarges the stack, and returning from a procedure shrinks it. Stack memory is exclusive to the virtual machine that owns it.
In addition to their stacks, virtual machines also have access to the global memory (modules, global bindings, etc) that is shared among other parts of Guile, including other VMs.
The registers that a VM has are as follows:
In other architectures, the instruction pointer is sometimes called the “program counter” (pc). This set of registers is pretty typical for virtual machines; their exact meanings in the context of Guile’s VM are described in the next section.