Difference between revisions of "Stack Pointer"

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In many machines (e.g. the PDP-11) any of the CPU's general purpose registers can be used as a stack pointer, but there is still usually one that is 'special' to the hardware (e.g. used during the processing of [[interrupt]]s), and this is usually distinguished as 'the' SP.
 
In many machines (e.g. the PDP-11) any of the CPU's general purpose registers can be used as a stack pointer, but there is still usually one that is 'special' to the hardware (e.g. used during the processing of [[interrupt]]s), and this is usually distinguished as 'the' SP.
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[[Category: CPU Basics]]

Latest revision as of 16:24, 15 December 2018

A Stack Pointer (often abbreviated as SP) is a special register inside a CPU, used by the CPU to do operations on a stack held in main memory.

In many machines (e.g. the PDP-11) any of the CPU's general purpose registers can be used as a stack pointer, but there is still usually one that is 'special' to the hardware (e.g. used during the processing of interrupts), and this is usually distinguished as 'the' SP.