How does this relate to computer being in Halt state, which is quite valid state for servers (there could be even a dedicated Halt button)? Technically computer hardware is ON. I remember that in such state it shows a "carrot" prompt (>>>) from the SRE console.
By the way, there is also HCF instruction (Halt and Catch Fire).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire_(computing...
I was somewhat recently scarred for life by this instruction, having just discovered that if you execute HCF on the MIPS-based integrated circuits in Stationeers, the simulated IC... explodes in your face.
(The platform is Alpha, right? Given the prompt and name for the console, though it was SRM, not SRE) :)
(Alpha) System Reference Manual:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Reference_Manual
Funny thing, for some historic reason, the system terminal attached to cabinet with those memorable Alpha Servers was of the monochrome lineage, but the phosphors color was orange. So the >>> prompt was unmistakably a carrot one! However it would rarely be seen, as bulk of the time the console would busily beep and boop with operator messages, as any respectful Alphas would be on 24/7/365 duty.
The only forced interruption I witnessed was when the attached storage controller froze. Literally. Someone left a window open in the server room, with -20C outdoors. So with all that circulation there was ICE accumulation on one side of storage controler cabinet. Apparently that put it beyond service temp range. Well, thawed it out - back to bizznizz, so to speak.
It that case, should've been is_system_iced() system call, it could've saved us the trip on such a freezing night. We would've just called HCF... briefly :)
Interestingly enough, there are few systems in Alpha lineage that have what's known as "external console", meaning that instead of running SRM on the normal CPUs, they had separate frontend processor and main cpus only had shims to communicate with it. Marvel was one of those, but apparently there were older ones as well.
Also, if you had partition-capable Alpha, the carrot prompt would be made into Pxx> where xx referred to currently selected cpu. With VMS, you could then boot into "VMS Galaxy" mode where you had multiple VMS systems running without hypervisor, just with all of them carefully avoiding stepping on each others' resources.
In order for the code to execute anywhere, at least one core must be powered on and not halted. Also, I would consider a halted CPU to still be powered on.
Otherwise, the function's name has no relation to it's behavior and it's a buggy function on top of being a useless but amusing thought experiment.