Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A function prologue typically does the following actions if the architecture has a base pointer (also known as frame pointer) and a stack pointer: Pushes current base pointer onto the stack, so it can be restored later. Value of base pointer is set to the address of stack pointer (which is pointed to the top of the stack) so that the base ...
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).
x86 assembly language is a family of low-level programming languages that are used to produce object code for the x86 class of processors. These languages provide backward compatibility with CPUs dating back to the Intel 8008 microprocessor, introduced in April 1972.
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 should not be the case.
Microsoft and Sun Microsystems/Oracle also use term "x64", while many Linux distributions, and the BSDs also use the "amd64" term. Microsoft Windows, for example, designates its 32-bit versions as "x86" and 64-bit versions as "x64", while installation files of 64-bit Windows versions are required to be placed into a directory called "AMD64". [20]
In many programming environments for C and C-derived languages on 64-bit machines, int variables are still 32 bits wide, but long integers and pointers are 64 bits wide. These are described as having an LP64 data model , which is an abbreviation of "Long, Pointer, 64".
A computer program can access an address given explicitly – in low-level programming this is usually called an absolute address, or sometimes a specific address, and is known as pointer data type in higher-level languages. But a program can also use relative address which specifies a location in relation to somewhere else (the base address).
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.