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Pointer formats are known as near, far, or huge. Near pointers are 16-bit offsets within the reference segment, i.e. DS for data and CS for code. They are the fastest pointers, but are limited to point to 64 KB of memory (to the associated segment of the data type). Near pointers can be held in registers (typically SI and DI).
To pass "in memory", the caller allocates memory and passes a pointer to it as a hidden first parameter; the callee populates the memory and returns the pointer, popping the hidden pointer when returning. [2] In Linux, GCC sets the de facto standard for calling conventions. Since GCC version 4.5, the stack must be aligned to a 16-byte boundary ...
A pointer a pointing to the memory address associated with a variable b, i.e., a contains the memory address 1008 of the variable b.In this diagram, the computing architecture uses the same address space and data primitive for both pointers and non-pointers; this need not be the case.
Each can be accessed as two separate bytes (thus BX's high byte can be accessed as BH and low byte as BL). Two pointer registers have special roles: SP (stack pointer) points to the "top" of the stack, and BP (base pointer) is often used to point at some other place in the stack, typically above the local variables (see frame pointer).
The x86-64 architecture does not use segmentation in long mode (64-bit mode). Four of the segment registers, CS, SS, DS, and ES, are forced to base address 0, and the limit to 2 64. The segment registers FS and GS can still have a nonzero base address. This allows operating systems to use these segments for special purposes.
Increment shadow stack pointer 3 Tiger Lake, Zen 3: INCSSPQ r64: F3 REX.W 0F AE /5: RDSSPD r32: F3 0F 1E /1: Read shadow stack pointer into register (low 32 bits) [a] RDSSPQ r64: F3 REX.W 0F 1E /1: Read shadow stack pointer into register (full 64 bits) [a] SAVEPREVSSP: F3 0F 01 EA: Save previous shadow stack pointer RSTORSSP m64: F3 0F 01 /5
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 32-bit version of the x86 architecture is used with many different calling conventions. Due to the small number of architectural registers, and historical focus on simplicity and small code-size, many x86 calling conventions pass arguments on the stack. The return value (or a pointer to it) is returned in a register.