RE: Questions on the stack for IA64

[David Mosberger <davidm@napali.hpl.hp.com>]

>>>>> On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 22:05:56 -0700 (PDT), Rahul Chaturvedi <justanotheraliasforrahul@yahoo.com> said:

  Rahul> Does the compiler ever touch this backing store?

Not directly.

  Rahul> I believe it is used during a stack unwind?

Yes (as is the memory stack and the registers).

  Rahul>         printf("", a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n,
  Rahul> o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z, aa, bb, cc, dd, ee, ff,
  Rahul> gg);

  Rahul> As you can see, almost all the parameters are being "st4'd"
  Rahul> to memory. From the architecture specification, shouldn't all
  Rahul> these be moved into registers? I have a total of much lesser
  Rahul> than 96 parameters?

You need to look at the software conventions & runtime architecture guide:

  http://www.intel.com/design/itanium/downloads/245358.htm

It specifies that up to 8 registers are used for argument passing.

There are also some fine books that might help you get started. ;-)

	--david
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