General purpose use of a stack pointer register

Details General purpose use of a stack pointer register General purpose use of a stack pointer register

1994-09-30

1997-05-27

Harvey, Jack B.

395378, G06F 906

Patent

active

056340460

ABSTRACT:
The stack pointer register in a computer is made available for general purpose use by programs executing at lower privilege levels than interrupt handlers. A set of instructions in such programs, excluding stack operations, stores data other than the stack pointer, such as operands, and the like, in the stack pointer register. When switching execution to an interrupt handler on an interrupt, return address data for the currently executing program is pushed onto a stack at the interrupt handler's privilege level. Thus, storing other data in the stack pointer register does not result in stack corruption. Also, these instructions can store data in a scratch portion of a stack segment beyond the current stack pointer.

REFERENCES:
patent: 5303378 (1994-04-01), Cohen
patent: 5491826 (1996-02-01), Koino
IBM Corp, "Allocating Heap and Stack Memory", IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, vol. 34, Nr. 5, p. 464-465. Oct. 1, 1991.

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