This month I'll complete the overview of IA-64 (Itanium) parameter passing, stack frames, and return values that I began last month. In the previous column, I reviewed stack frames and how parameters are passed on the x86 CPU. I then examined the essential IA-64 registers that you'll need to know. If you're not familiar with the basic set of IA-64 registers (including the dynamic nature of the general-purpose registers), I suggest you read my previous column (see Under the Hood). To quickly review, the IA-64 defines 128 general-purpose integer registers, each 64 bits wide, and named r0 through r127.
