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Register Usage for Linux/PA-RISC

[ an asterisk is used for planned usage which is currently unimplemented ]

        General Registers as specified by ABI

        FPU Registers must not be used in kernel mode

        Control Registers

CR 0 (Recovery Counter)         used for ptrace

CR 1-CR 7(undefined)            unused

CR 8 (Protection ID)            per-process value*

CR 9, 12, 13 (PIDS)             unused

CR10 (CCR)                      lazy FPU saving*

CR11                            as specified by ABI

CR14 (interruption vector)      initialized to fault_vector

CR15 (EIEM)                     initialized to all ones*

CR16 (Interval Timer)           read for cycle count/write starts Interval Tmr

CR17-CR22                       interruption parameters

CR23 (EIRR)                     read for pending interrupts/write clears bits

CR24 (TR 0)                     Kernel Space Page Directory Pointer

CR25 (TR 1)                     User   Space Page Directory Pointer

CR26 (TR 2)                     not used

CR27 (TR 3)                     Thread descriptor pointer

CR28 (TR 4)                     not used

CR29 (TR 5)                     not used

CR30 (TR 6)                     current

CR31 (TR 7)                     interrupt stack base

        Space Registers (kernel mode)

SR0                             temporary space register

SR4-SR7                         set to 0

SR1                             temporary space register

SR2                             unused

SR3                             used for userspace accesses (current process)*

        Space Registers (user mode)

SR0                             temporary space register

SR1                             temporary space register

SR2                             holds space of linux gateway page

SR3                             holds user address space value while in kernel

SR4-SR7                         Defines short address space for user/kernel

        Processor Status Word

W (64-bit addresses)            0

E (Little-endian)               0

S (Secure Interval Timer)       0

T (Taken Branch Trap)           0

H (Higher-privilege trap)       0

L (Lower-privilege trap)        0

N (Nullify next instruction)    used by C code

X (Data memory break disable)   0

B (Taken Branch)                used by C code

C (code address translation)    1, 0 while executing real-mode code

V (divide step correction)      used by C code

M (HPMC mask)                   0, 1 while executing HPMC handler*

C/B (carry/borrow bits)         used by C code

O (ordered references)          1*

F (performance monitor)         0

R (Recovery Counter trap)       0

Q (collect interruption state)  1 (0 in code directly preceding an rfi)

P (Protection Identifiers)      1*

D (Data address translation)    1, 0 while executing real-mode code

I (external interrupt mask)     used by cli()/sti() macros

        "Invisible" Registers

PSW default W value             0

PSW default E value             0

Shadow Registers                used by interruption handler code

TOC enable bit                  1

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Info from John Marvin:

From: "John Marvin" 

To: randolf@tausq.org

Subject: Re: parisc asm questions

[...]

For the general registers:

r1,r2,r19-r26,r28,r29 & r31 can be used without saving them first. And of

course, you need to save them if you care about them, before calling

another procedure. Some of the above registers do have special meanings

that you should be aware of:

    r1: The addil instruction is hardwired to place its result in r1,

        so if you use that instruction be aware of that.

    r2: This is the return pointer. In general you don't want to

        use this, since you need the pointer to get back to your

        caller. However, it is grouped with this set of registers

        since the caller can't rely on the value being the same

        when you return, i.e. you can copy r2 to another register

        and return through that register after trashing r2, and

        that should not cause a problem for the calling routine.

    r19-r22: these are generally regarded as temporary registers.

        Note that in 64 bit they are arg7-arg4.

    r23-r26: these are arg3-arg0, i.e. you can use them if you

        don't care about the values that were passed in anymore.

    r28,r29: are ret0 and ret1. They are what you pass return values

        in. r28 is the primary return. I'm not sure I remember

        under what circumstances stuff is returned in r29 (millicode

        perhaps).

    r31: the ble instruction puts the return pointer in here.

r3-r18,r27,r30 need to be saved and restored. r3-r18 are just

    general purpose registers. r27 is the data pointer, and is

    used to make references to global variables easier. r30 is

    the stack pointer.

John