ARM: CORTEX M, PRIMASK does not disable interrupts qemu version 0.15.1 but the same code is in qemu 1.0 "CPSID I" does not disable interrupts for CORTEX M3 if (interrupt_request & CPU_INTERRUPT_HARD && ((IS_M(env) && env->regs[15] < 0xfffffff0) || !(env->uncached_cpsr & CPSR_I))) { env->exception_index = EXCP_IRQ; do_interrupt(env); next_tb = 0; } do_interrupt() will be executed even if (env->uncached_cpsr & CPSR_I) == 1 , disable interrupt bit set. then changed to: if (interrupt_request & CPU_INTERRUPT_HARD && !(env->uncached_cpsr & CPSR_I) && (IS_M(env) ? env->regs[15] < 0xfffffff0: 1) ) { env->exception_index = EXCP_IRQ; do_interrupt(env); next_tb = 0; } works This change changes the behaviour for non-M-profile cores, which looks wrong. See discussion in this mailing list thread where a similar patch was suggested: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2011-06/msg00500.html M profile interrupt handling is known-broken. I'm not accepting any patches in this area unless they come attached to a decent explanation of why they are the correct change to make and show some evidence of the whole problem having been considered. > This change changes the behaviour for non-M-profile cores ...or maybe not: I was confused by the resemblance to that other patch. I still think one-line fixes are unlikely to be the right approach here, though. This long-standing bug has been fixed by the rewrite of the M-profile exception handling for QEMU 2.9.