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In computer science, a call stack is a stack data structure that stores information about the active subroutines of a computer program.This type of stack is also known as an execution stack, program stack, control stack, run-time stack, or machine stack, and is often shortened to simply the "stack".
Newer processors contain a dedicated stack engine to optimize stack operations. Pentium M was the first x86 processor to introduce a stack engine. In its implementation, the stack pointer is split among two registers: ESP O , which is a 32-bit register, and ESP d , an 8-bit delta value that is updated directly by stack operations.
The stack is often used to store variables of fixed length local to the currently active functions. Programmers may further choose to explicitly use the stack to store local data of variable length. If a region of memory lies on the thread's stack, that memory is said to have been allocated on the stack, i.e. stack-based memory allocation (SBMA).
In computer science, computer engineering and programming language implementations, a stack machine is a computer processor or a virtual machine in which the primary interaction is moving short-lived temporary values to and from a push down stack. In the case of a hardware processor, a hardware stack is used.
In particular, how the stack frame is restored so the caller may continue after the callee has finished. Whether and how metadata describing the arguments is passed; Where the previous value of the frame pointer is stored, which is used to restore the stack frame when the subroutine ends. Options include within the call stack, or in a specific ...
Minimal instruction set computer (MISC) is a central processing unit (CPU) architecture, usually in the form of a microprocessor, with a very small number of basic operations and corresponding opcodes, together forming an instruction set. Such sets are commonly stack-based rather than register-based to reduce the size of operand specifiers.
SS:SP (SS is Stack Segment, SP is Stack Pointer) points to the address of the top of the stack, i.e. the most recently pushed byte. SS:BP (SS is Stack Segment, BP is Stack Frame Pointer) points to the address of the top of the stack frame, i.e. the base of the data area in the call stack for the currently active subprogram.
The architecture provides built-in mechanisms for making procedure calls using the stack, and special-purpose registers for addressing the top of the stack and the base of the current stack frame. Off-stack data is typically addressed via a descriptor. This is a 64-bit structure containing a 32-bit virtual address and 32 bits of control ...