I'd like to call your attention to two packages that leverage SLIME's swank debugging protocol. The first
https://github.com/brown/swank-client
is an implementation of the client side of swank. With Swank Client one Lisp process can send forms to a remote Lisp for evaluation. If a condition is signaled in the remote Lisp, you can see the stack trace in Emacs and debug it. Here's some ASCII art that shows the swank connections:
Emacs/Slime ---- Master Lisp ---- Remote Lisp
Swank Crew uses Swank Client to create worker pools of remote Lisp jobs. You can then use functions like PARALLEL-MAPCAR or PARALLEL-REDUCE to evaluate forms across many worker Lisp jobs. Here's another picture:
Emacs/Slime | Master Lisp | | | | | ---- Worker Lisp 1 | ------ Worker Lisp 2 --------- Worker Lisp 3
Let me know if you give either of these libraries a try.
bob