1. A method of fault handling in a data processing system, wherein said method comprises: A) detecting a first fault; B) determining a fault number for the first fault; C) indexing into a fault vector pointer table with the fault number as an index into the fault vector point table to select a fault vector pointer table entry; D) utilizing the fault vector pointer table entry as a first pointer to access a first entry descriptor describing a first fault routine; and E) validating the first entry descriptor.