On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 11:34:37AM +0200, Harald Krapfenbauer wrote:
> I want to know how 64-bit values are passed on a little-endian 32-bit
> MIPS machine on function calls.
>
> If there is one 64-bit argument to a function, it is passed in registers
> a0-a1 I think, but does a0 contain the lower 4 bytes or the upper 4?
>
> Similarly, if there are several arguments so that a 64-bit argument is
> passed on the stack: Do the lower 4 bytes go to the lower address or to
> the higher?
Give a man a fish and he's got to eat for one day. Teach a man how to
fish and he's got food for a life ;-)
I suggest to find out about such ABI details you write a small test program
in C, compile that to assembler code using the -S option and check the
generated .s file. For example:
$ cat c.c
extern foo(unsigned long long a1, unsigned long long a2,
unsigned long long a3);
void bar(void)
{
foo(1UL, 2UL, 3UL);
}
$ mips-linux-gcc -fno-pic -mno-abicalls -O2 -S c.c
.file 1 "c.c"
.section .mdebug.abi32
.previous
.gnu_attribute 4, 1
.text
.align 2
.globl bar
.ent bar
.type bar, @function
bar:
.set nomips16
.frame $sp,32,$31 # vars= 0, regs= 1/0, args= 24, gp= 0
.mask 0x80000000,-4
.fmask 0x00000000,0
.set noreorder
.set nomacro
addiu $sp,$sp,-32
li $3,3 # 0x3
move $2,$0
li $5,1 # 0x1
move $4,$0
li $7,2 # 0x2
move $6,$0
sw $31,28($sp)
sw $3,20($sp)
jal foo
sw $2,16($sp)
lw $31,28($sp)
nop
j $31
addiu $sp,$sp,32
.set macro
.set reorder
.end bar
.ident "GCC: (GNU) 4.3.0"
$
mips-linux-gcc is the big endian compiler. Repeat for little endian:
$ mipsel-linux-gcc -fno-pic -mno-abicalls -O2 -S c.c
.file 1 "c.c"
.section .mdebug.abi32
.previous
.gnu_attribute 4, 1
.text
.align 2
.globl bar
.ent bar
.type bar, @function
bar:
.set nomips16
.frame $sp,32,$31 # vars= 0, regs= 1/0, args= 24, gp= 0
.mask 0x80000000,-4
.fmask 0x00000000,0
.set noreorder
.set nomacro
addiu $sp,$sp,-32
li $2,3 # 0x3
move $3,$0
li $4,1 # 0x1
move $5,$0
li $6,2 # 0x2
move $7,$0
sw $31,28($sp)
sw $2,16($sp)
jal foo
sw $3,20($sp)
lw $31,28($sp)
nop
j $31
addiu $sp,$sp,32
.set macro
.set reorder
.end bar
.ident "GCC: (GNU) 4.3.0"
$
Ignore the "-fno-pic -mno-abicalls" options; they disable the PIC code
generation which on MIPS is default and is making the generated code well
harder to read.
You will notice that big endian compiler uses register pairs $4/$5 rsp.
$6/$6 in the order high / low half and the little endian compiler does it
in the reverse order; similar for the memory order for stack arguments.
Ralf
