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An update: Conforming is no built into branch ops, so the only use of a separate op is to recover live values from the mix of live and dead, as you suggest. Consequently the former “conform” op is no spelled “rescue”.

Rescue is cheap in execution time but expensive in code space when a value is only used far from where it is defined. A significant part of the specialize heuristics are devoted to finding a balance between use of rescue and of spill-fill.

We looked into auto-kill, but so far it seems to not fit the hardware timing; figuring out how things get reordered in the specializer is faster than trying to do it at runtime.

Rescue is only useful when the currently live values fit on the belt but some are out of reach. If the live-value count exceeds the belt size then there’s nothing for it but spill and refill when belt pressure is lower.