.. comment SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-SA-4.0
.. comment Permission granted by the original author (Peter Magnusson) to
.. comment convert this page to Rest and include in the RTEMS Documentation.
.. comment This content is no longer online and only accessible at
.. comment https://web.archive.org/web/20120205014832/https://www.sics.se/~psm/sparcstack.html
.. comment XXX Format Tables
.. comment XXX Format Figures (could be code, ascii art, etc.)
.. comment XXX double check against web page
.. comment XXX Fix Figure references in text
.. comment XXX instruction names probably should be marked as code font
Understanding stacks and registers in the SPARC architecture(s)
===============================================================
The SPARC architecture from Sun Microsystems has some "interesting"
characteristics. After having to deal with both compiler, interpreter, OS
emulator, and OS porting issues for the SPARC, I decided to gather notes
and documentation in one place. If there are any issues you don't find
addressed by this page, or if you know of any similar Net resources, let
me know. This document is limited to the V8 version of the architecture.
General Structure
-----------------
SPARC has 32 general purpose integer registers visible to the program
at any given time. Of these, 8 registers are global registers and 24
registers are in a register window. A window consists of three groups
of 8 registers, the out, local, and in registers. See table 1. A SPARC
implementation can have from 2 to 32 windows, thus varying the number
of registers from 40 to 520. Most implentations have 7 or 8 windows. The
variable number of registers is the principal reason for the SPARC being
"scalable".
At any given time, only one window is visible, as determined by the
current window pointer (CWP) which is part of the processor status
register (PSR). This is a five bit value that can be decremented or
incremented by the SAVE and RESTORE instructions, respectively. These
instructions are generally executed on procedure call and return
(respectively). The idea is that the in registers contain incoming
parameters, the local register constitute scratch registers, the out
registers contain outgoing parameters, and the global registers contain
values that vary little between executions. The register windows overlap
partially, thus the out registers become renamed by SAVE to become the in
registers of the called procedure. Thus, the memory traffic is reduced
when going up and down the procedure call. Since this is a frequent
operation, performance is improved.
(That was the idea, anyway. The drawback is that upon interactions
with the system the registers need to be flushed to the stack,
necessitating a long sequence of writes to memory of data that is
often mostly garbage. Register windows was a bad idea that was caused
by simulation studies that considered only programs in isolation, as
opposed to multitasking workloads, and by considering compilers with
poor optimization. It also caused considerable problems in implementing
high-end SPARC processors such as the SuperSPARC, although more recent
implementations have dealt effectively with the obstacles. Register
windows is now part of the compatibility legacy and not easily removed
from the architecture.)
.. comment XXX FIX FORMATTING
+------------+------------+---------------+
| Register | Mnemonic | Register |
| Group | | Address |
+============+============+===============+
+ global + %g0-%g7 + r[0] - r[7] +
+------------+------------+---------------+
+ out + %o0-%o7 + r[8] - r[15] +
+------------+------------+---------------+
+ local + %l0-%l7 + r[16] - r[23] +
+------------+------------+---------------+
+ in + %i0-%i7 + r[24] - r[31] +
+------------+------------+---------------+
Table 1 - Visible Registers
The overlap of the registers is illustrated in figure 1. The figure
shows an implementation with 8 windows, numbered 0 to 7 (labeled w0 to
w7 in the figure).. Each window corresponds to 24 registers, 16 of which
are shared with "neighboring" windows. The windows are arranged in a
wrap-around manner, thus window number 0 borders window number 7. The
common cause of changing the current window, as pointed to by CWP, is
the RESTORE and SAVE instuctions, shown in the middle. Less common is
the supervisor RETT instruction (return from trap) and the trap event
(interrupt, exception, or TRAP instruction).
.. comment XXX insert graphic from website (redraw if needed)
Figure 1 - Windowed Registers
The "WIM" register is also indicated in the top left of Figure 1. The
window invalid mask is a bit map of valid windows. It is generally used
as a pointer, i.e. exactly one bit is set in the WIM register indicating
which window is invalid (in the figure it's window 7). Register windows
are generally used to support procedure calls, so they can be viewed
as a cache of the stack contents. The WIM "pointer" indicates how
many procedure calls in a row can be taken without writing out data to
memory. In the figure, the capacity of the register windows is fully
utilized. An additional call will thus exceed capacity, triggering a
window overflow trap. At the other end, a window underflow trap occurs
when the register window "cache" if empty and more data needs to be
fetched from memory.
Register Semantics
------------------
The SPARC Architecture includes recommended software semantics. These are
described in the architecture manual, the SPARC ABI (application binary
interface) standard, and, unfortunately, in various other locations as
well (including header files and compiler documentation).
Figure 2 shows a summary of register contents at any given time.
.. comment XXX FIX FORMATTING
.. code-block:: c
%g0 (r00) always zero
%g1 (r01) [1] temporary value
%g2 (r02) [2] global 2
global %g3 (r03) [2] global 3
%g4 (r04) [2] global 4
%g5 (r05) reserved for SPARC ABI
%g6 (r06) reserved for SPARC ABI
%g7 (r07) reserved for SPARC ABI
%o0 (r08) [3] outgoing parameter 0 / return value from callee
%o1 (r09) [1] outgoing parameter 1
%o2 (r10) [1] outgoing parameter 2
out %o3 (r11) [1] outgoing parameter 3
%o4 (r12) [1] outgoing parameter 4
%o5 (r13) [1] outgoing parameter 5
%sp, %o6 (r14) [1] stack pointer
%o7 (r15) [1] temporary value / address of CALL instruction
%l0 (r16) [3] local 0
%l1 (r17) [3] local 1
%l2 (r18) [3] local 2
local %l3 (r19) [3] local 3
%l4 (r20) [3] local 4
%l5 (r21) [3] local 5
%l6 (r22) [3] local 6
%l7 (r23) [3] local 7
%i0 (r24) [3] incoming parameter 0 / return value to caller
%i1 (r25) [3] incoming parameter 1
%i2 (r26) [3] incoming parameter 2
in %i3 (r27) [3] incoming parameter 3
%i4 (r28) [3] incoming parameter 4
%i5 (r29) [3] incoming parameter 5
%fp, %i6 (r30) [3] frame pointer
%i7 (r31) [3] return address - 8
Notes:
[1] assumed by caller to be destroyed (volatile) across a procedure call
[2] should not be used by SPARC ABI library code
[3] assumed by caller to be preserved across a procedure call
Figure 2 - SPARC register semantics
Particular compilers are likely to vary slightly.
Note that globals %g2-%g4 are reserved for the "application", which
includes libraries and compiler. Thus, for example, libraries may
overwrite these registers unless they've been compiled with suitable
flags. Also, the "reserved" registers are presumed to be allocated
(in the future) bottom-up, i.e. %g7 is currently the "safest" to use.
Optimizing linkers and interpreters are exmples that use global registers.
Register Windows and the Stack
------------------------------
The SPARC register windows are, naturally, intimately related to the
stack. In particular, the stack pointer (%sp or %o6) must always point
to a free block of 64 bytes. This area is used by the operating system
(Solaris, SunOS, and Linux at least) to save the current local and in
registers upon a system interupt, exception, or trap instruction. (Note
that this can occur at any time.)
Other aspects of register relations with memory are programming
convention. The typical, and recommended, layout of the stack is shown
in figure 3. The figure shows a stack frame.
.. comment XXX FIX FORMATTING
.. code-block:: c
low addresses
+-------------------------+
%sp --> | 16 words for storing |
| LOCAL and IN registers |
+-------------------------+
| one-word pointer to |
| aggregate return value |
+-------------------------+
| 6 words for callee |
| to store register |
| arguments |
+-------------------------+
| outgoing parameters |
| past the 6th, if any |
+-------------------------+
| space, if needed, for |
| compiler temporaries |
| and saved floating- |
| point registers |
+-------------------------+
+-------------------------+
| space dynamically |
| allocated via the |
| alloca() library call |
+-------------------------+
| space, if needed, for |
| automatic arrays, |
| aggregates, and |
| addressable scalar |
| automatics |
+-------------------------+
%fp -->
high addresses
Figure 3 - Stack frame contents
Note that the top boxes of figure 3 are addressed via the stack pointer
(%sp), as positive offsets (including zero), and the bottom boxes are
accessed over the frame pointer using negative offsets (excluding zero),
and that the frame pointer is the old stack pointer. This scheme allows
the separation of information known at compile time (number and size
of local parameters, etc) from run-time information (size of blocks
allocated by alloca()).
"addressable scalar automatics" is a fancy name for local variables.
The clever nature of the stack and frame pointers are that they are always
16 registers apart in the register windows. Thus, a SAVE instruction will
make the current stack pointer into the frame pointer and, since the SAVE
instruction also doubles as an ADD, create a new stack pointer. Figure 4
illustrates what the top of a stack might look like during execution. (The
listing is from the "pwin" command in the SimICS simulator.)
.. comment XXX FIX FORMATTING
.. code-block:: c
REGISTER WINDOWS
+--+---+----------+
|g0|r00|0x00000000| global
|g1|r01|0x00000006| registers
|g2|r02|0x00091278|
g0-g7 |g3|r03|0x0008ebd0|
|g4|r04|0x00000000| (note: 'save' and 'trap' decrements CWP,
|g5|r05|0x00000000| i.e. moves it up on this diagram. 'restore'
|g6|r06|0x00000000| and 'rett' increments CWP, i.e. down)
|g7|r07|0x00000000|
+--+---+----------+
CWP (2) |o0|r08|0x00000002|
|o1|r09|0x00000000| MEMORY
|o2|r10|0x00000001|
o0-o7 |o3|r11|0x00000001| stack growth
|o4|r12|0x000943d0|
|o5|r13|0x0008b400| ^
|sp|r14|0xdffff9a0| ----\ /|\
|o7|r15|0x00062abc| | | addresses
+--+---+----------+ | +--+----------+ virtual physical
|l0|r16|0x00087c00| \---> |l0|0x00000000| 0xdffff9a0 0x000039a0 top of frame 0
|l1|r17|0x00027fd4| |l1|0x00000000| 0xdffff9a4 0x000039a4
|l2|r18|0x00000000| |l2|0x0009df80| 0xdffff9a8 0x000039a8
l0-l7 |l3|r19|0x00000000| |l3|0x00097660| 0xdffff9ac 0x000039ac
|l4|r20|0x00000000| |l4|0x00000014| 0xdffff9b0 0x000039b0
|l5|r21|0x00097678| |l5|0x00000001| 0xdffff9b4 0x000039b4
|l6|r22|0x0008b400| |l6|0x00000004| 0xdffff9b8 0x000039b8
|l7|r23|0x0008b800| |l7|0x0008dd60| 0xdffff9bc 0x000039bc
+--+--+---+----------+ +--+----------+
CWP+1 (3) |o0|i0|r24|0x00000002| |i0|0x00091048| 0xdffff9c0 0x000039c0
|o1|i1|r25|0x00000000| |i1|0x00000011| 0xdffff9c4 0x000039c4
|o2|i2|r26|0x0008b7c0| |i2|0x00091158| 0xdffff9c8 0x000039c8
i0-i7 |o3|i3|r27|0x00000019| |i3|0x0008d370| 0xdffff9cc 0x000039cc
|o4|i4|r28|0x0000006c| |i4|0x0008eac4| 0xdffff9d0 0x000039d0
|o5|i5|r29|0x00000000| |i5|0x00000000| 0xdffff9d4 0x000039d4
|o6|fp|r30|0xdffffa00| ----\ |fp|0x00097660| 0xdffff9d8 0x000039d8
|o7|i7|r31|0x00040468| | |i7|0x00000000| 0xdffff9dc 0x000039dc
+--+--+---+----------+ | +--+----------+
| |0x00000001| 0xdffff9e0 0x000039e0 parameters
| |0x00000002| 0xdffff9e4 0x000039e4
| |0x00000040| 0xdffff9e8 0x000039e8
| |0x00097671| 0xdffff9ec 0x000039ec
| |0xdffffa68| 0xdffff9f0 0x000039f0
| |0x00024078| 0xdffff9f4 0x000039f4
| |0x00000004| 0xdffff9f8 0x000039f8
| |0x0008dd60| 0xdffff9fc 0x000039fc
+--+------+----------+ | +--+----------+
|l0| |0x00087c00| \---> |l0|0x00091048| 0xdffffa00 0x00003a00 top of frame 1
|l1| |0x000c8d48| |l1|0x0000000b| 0xdffffa04 0x00003a04
|l2| |0x000007ff| |l2|0x00091158| 0xdffffa08 0x00003a08
|l3| |0x00000400| |l3|0x000c6f10| 0xdffffa0c 0x00003a0c
|l4| |0x00000000| |l4|0x0008eac4| 0xdffffa10 0x00003a10
|l5| |0x00088000| |l5|0x00000000| 0xdffffa14 0x00003a14
|l6| |0x0008d5e0| |l6|0x000c6f10| 0xdffffa18 0x00003a18
|l7| |0x00088000| |l7|0x0008cd00| 0xdffffa1c 0x00003a1c
+--+--+---+----------+ +--+----------+
CWP+2 (4) |i0|o0| |0x00000002| |i0|0x0008cb00| 0xdffffa20 0x00003a20
|i1|o1| |0x00000011| |i1|0x00000003| 0xdffffa24 0x00003a24
|i2|o2| |0xffffffff| |i2|0x00000040| 0xdffffa28 0x00003a28
|i3|o3| |0x00000000| |i3|0x0009766b| 0xdffffa2c 0x00003a2c
|i4|o4| |0x00000000| |i4|0xdffffa68| 0xdffffa30 0x00003a30
|i5|o5| |0x00064c00| |i5|0x000253d8| 0xdffffa34 0x00003a34
|i6|o6| |0xdffffa70| ----\ |i6|0xffffffff| 0xdffffa38 0x00003a38
|i7|o7| |0x000340e8| | |i7|0x00000000| 0xdffffa3c 0x00003a3c
+--+--+---+----------+ | +--+----------+
| |0x00000001| 0xdffffa40 0x00003a40 parameters
| |0x00000000| 0xdffffa44 0x00003a44
| |0x00000000| 0xdffffa48 0x00003a48
| |0x00000000| 0xdffffa4c 0x00003a4c
| |0x00000000| 0xdffffa50 0x00003a50
| |0x00000000| 0xdffffa54 0x00003a54
| |0x00000002| 0xdffffa58 0x00003a58
| |0x00000002| 0xdffffa5c 0x00003a5c
| | . |
| | . | .. etc (another 16 bytes)
| | . |
Figure 4 - Sample stack contents
Note how the stack contents are not necessarily synchronized with the
registers. Various events can cause the register windows to be "flushed"
to memory, including most system calls. A programmer can force this
update by using ST_FLUSH_WINDOWS trap, which also reduces the number of
valid windows to the minimum of 1.
Writing a library for multithreaded execution is an example that requires
explicit flushing, as is longjmp().
Procedure epilogue and prologue
-------------------------------
The stack frame described in the previous section leads to the standard
entry/exit mechanisms listed in figure 5.
.. comment XXX FIX FORMATTING
.. code-block:: c
function:
save %sp, -C, %sp
; perform function, leave return value,
; if any, in register %i0 upon exit
ret ; jmpl %i7+8, %g0
restore ; restore %g0,%g0,%g0
Figure 5 - Epilogue/prologue in procedures
The SAVE instruction decrements the CWP, as discussed earlier, and also
performs an addition. The constant "C" that is used in the figure to
indicate the amount of space to make on the stack, and thus corresponds
to the frame contents in Figure 3. The minimum is therefore the 16 words
for the LOCAL and IN registers, i.e. (hex) 0x40 bytes.
A confusing element of the SAVE instruction is that the source operands
(the first two parameters) are read from the old register window, and
the destination operand (the rightmost parameter) is written to the new
window. Thus, allthough "%sp" is indicated as both source and destination,
the result is actually written into the stack pointer of the new window
(the source stack pointer becomes renamed and is now the frame pointer).
The return instructions are also a bit particular. ret is a synthetic
instruction, corresponding to jmpl (jump linked). This instruction
jumps to the address resulting from adding 8 to the %i7 register. The
source instruction address (the address of the ret instruction itself)
is written to the %g0 register, i.e. it is discarded.
The restore instruction is similarly a synthetic instruction, and is
just a short form for a restore that choses not to perform an addition.
The calling instruction, in turn, typically looks as follows:
.. comment XXX FIX FORMATTING
.. code-block:: c
call <function> ; jmpl <address>, %o7
mov 0, %o0
Again, the call instruction is synthetic, and is actually the same
instruction that performs the return. This time, however, it is interested
in saving the return address, into register %o7. Note that the delay
slot is often filled with an instruction related to the parameters,
in this example it sets the first parameter to zero.
Note also that the return value is also generally passed in %o0.
Leaf procedures are different. A leaf procedure is an optimization that
reduces unnecessary work by taking advantage of the knowledge that no
call instructions exist in many procedures. Thus, the save/restore couple
can be eliminated. The downside is that such a procedure may only use
the out registers (since the in and local registers actually belong to
the caller). See Figure 6.
.. comment XXX FIX FORMATTING
.. code-block:: c
function:
; no save instruction needed upon entry
; perform function, leave return value,
; if any, in register %o0 upon exit
retl ; jmpl %o7+8, %g0
nop ; the delay slot can be used for something else
Figure 6 - Epilogue/prologue in leaf procedures
Note in the figure that there is only one instruction overhead, namely the
retl instruction. retl is also synthetic (return from leaf subroutine), is
again a variant of the jmpl instruction, this time with %o7+8 as target.
Yet another variation of epilogue is caused by tail call elimination,
an optimization supported by some compilers (including Sun's C compiler
but not GCC). If the compiler detects that a called function will return
to the calling function, it can replace its place on the stack with the
called function. Figure 7 contains an example.
.. comment XXX FIX FORMATTING
.. code-block:: c
int
foo(int n)
{
if (n == 0)
return 0;
else
return bar(n);
}
cmp %o0,0
bne .L1
or %g0,%o7,%g1
retl
or %g0,0,%o0
.L1: call bar
or %g0,%g1,%o7
Figure 7 - Example of tail call elimination
Note that the call instruction overwrites register %o7 with the program
counter. Therefore the above code saves the old value of %o7, and restores
it in the delay slot of the call instruction. If the function call is
register indirect, this twiddling with %o7 can be avoided, but of course
that form of call is slower on modern processors.
The benefit of tail call elimination is to remove an indirection upon
return. It is also needed to reduce register window usage, since otherwise
the foo() function in Figure 7 would need to allocate a stack frame to
save the program counter.
A special form of tail call elimination is tail recursion elimination,
which detects functions calling themselves, and replaces it with a simple
branch. Figure 8 contains an example.
.. comment XXX FIX FORMATTING
.. code-block:: c
int
foo(int n)
{
if (n == 0)
return 1;
else
return (foo(n - 1));
}
cmp %o0,0
be .L1
or %g0,%o0,%g1
subcc %g1,1,%g1
.L2: bne .L2
subcc %g1,1,%g1
.L1: retl
or %g0,1,%o0
Figure 8 - Example of tail recursion elimination
Needless to say, these optimizations produce code that is difficult
to debug.
Procedures, stacks, and debuggers
---------------------------------
When debugging an application, your debugger will be parsing the binary
and consulting the symbol table to determine procedure entry points. It
will also travel the stack frames "upward" to determine the current
call chain.
When compiling for debugging, compilers will generate additional code
as well as avoid some optimizations in order to allow reconstructing
situations during execution. For example, GCC/GDB makes sure original
parameter values are kept intact somewhere for future parsing of
the procedure call stack. The live in registers other than %i0 are
not touched. %i0 itself is copied into a free local register, and its
location is noted in the symbol file. (You can find out where variables
reside by using the "info address" command in GDB.)
Given that much of the semantics relating to stack handling and procedure
call entry/exit code is only recommended, debuggers will sometimes
be fooled. For example, the decision as to wether or not the current
procedure is a leaf one or not can be incorrect. In this case a spurious
procedure will be inserted between the current procedure and it's "real"
parent. Another example is when the application maintains its own implicit
call hierarchy, such as jumping to function pointers. In this case the
debugger can easily become totally confused.
The window overflow and underflow traps
---------------------------------------
When the SAVE instruction decrements the current window pointer (CWP)
so that it coincides with the invalid window in the window invalid mask
(WIM), a window overflow trap occurs. Conversely, when the RESTORE or
RETT instructions increment the CWP to coincide with the invalid window,
a window underflow trap occurs.
Either trap is handled by the operating system. Generally, data is
written out to memory and/or read from memory, and the WIM register
suitably altered.
The code in Figure 9 and Figure 10 below are bare-bones handlers for
the two traps. The text is directly from the source code, and sort of
works. (As far as I know, these are minimalistic handlers for SPARC
V8). Note that there is no way to directly access window registers
other than the current one, hence the code does additional save/restore
instructions. It's pretty tricky to understand the code, but figure 1
should be of help.
.. comment XXX FIX FORMATTING
.. code-block:: c
/* a SAVE instruction caused a trap */
window_overflow:
/* rotate WIM on bit right, we have 8 windows */
mov %wim,%l3
sll %l3,7,%l4
srl %l3,1,%l3
or %l3,%l4,%l3
and %l3,0xff,%l3
/* disable WIM traps */
mov %g0,%wim
nop; nop; nop
/* point to correct window */
save
/* dump registers to stack */
std %l0, [%sp + 0]
std %l2, [%sp + 8]
std %l4, [%sp + 16]
std %l6, [%sp + 24]
std %i0, [%sp + 32]
std %i2, [%sp + 40]
std %i4, [%sp + 48]
std %i6, [%sp + 56]
/* back to where we should be */
restore
/* set new value of window */
mov %l3,%wim
nop; nop; nop
/* go home */
jmp %l1
rett %l2
Figure 9 - window_underflow trap handler
.. code-block:: c
/* a RESTORE instruction caused a trap */
window_underflow:
/* rotate WIM on bit LEFT, we have 8 windows */
mov %wim,%l3
srl %l3,7,%l4
sll %l3,1,%l3
or %l3,%l4,%l3
and %l3,0xff,%l3
/* disable WIM traps */
mov %g0,%wim
nop; nop; nop
/* point to correct window */
restore
restore
/* dump registers to stack */
ldd [%sp + 0], %l0
ldd [%sp + 8], %l2
ldd [%sp + 16], %l4
ldd [%sp + 24], %l6
ldd [%sp + 32], %i0
ldd [%sp + 40], %i2
ldd [%sp + 48], %i4
ldd [%sp + 56], %i6
/* back to where we should be */
save
save
/* set new value of window */
mov %l3,%wim
nop; nop; nop
/* go home */
jmp %l1
rett %l2
Figure 10 - window_underflow trap handler
