The Return of the Frame Pointers
Brendan Gregg
MARCH 16, 2024
The x86-64 ABI documentation shows how a CPU register, %rbp, can be used as a "base pointer" to a stack frame, aka the "frame pointer." Only in extreme circumstances does the cost (in processor time and I-cache footprint) translate to a tangible benefit - circumstances which usually resort to hand-coded assembly anyway.
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