Art of Assembly Language, 1st Edition

5.13. 5.13 Activation Records

Whenever you call a procedure there is certain information the program associates with that procedure call. The return address is a good example of some information the program maintains for a specific procedure call. Parameters and automatic local variables (i.e., those you declare in the var section) are additional examples of information the program maintains for each procedure call. Activation record is the term we'll use to describe the information the program associates with a specific call to a procedure.^[101]

^[101] Stack frame is another term many people use to describe the activation record.

Activation record is an appropriate name for this data structure. The program creates an activation record when calling ...