HP-UX 11i Internals

Stack Usage

PA-RISC uses a stack to keep track of local data and procedure call return information for each procedure call. The PA-RISC architecture does not provide explicit stack manipulation instructions. To manage the stack, the runtime architecture specifies that general register GR30 will be used as a stack pointer. This register is commonly referred to as the sp register.

The stack in PA-RISC grows upward in memory. That is, as data is added to the stack, it goes at increasing addresses and the stack pointer increases. When data is removed from the stack, the stack pointer decreases.

Each called procedure begins by increasing the stack pointer, thus allocating itself memory for local data storage and linkage information. This area is called ...