[fpc-devel] avr-port: register usage and calling convention?

[Georg Hieber]

Hi,
I am about to implement some rtl procedures in avr - assembler, and of 
course register usage and calling conventions are important for that.

The fpc wiki says concerning avr, "It uses the GCC AVR tool chain and 
will be compatible with GCC regarding calling conventions etc.". That 
would be passing arguments in  registers r25 - r8 downwards (first 
argument in r24, r25 if 16 byte, 2nd below that etc.). High bytes are in 
high and low bytes in low register no.
Function results are returned in r22 - r25 (32byte), r24-r25 (16 byte). 
According to GCC documentation, R0, R18-R27, R30, R31 are call used, R 
2-R17, R28 and R29 are call saved. R1 has always to be 0.

Actual code produced by the compiler looks different.  It is the same 
sequence of arguments (first in highest registers, second below that 
...), but the byte order is reversed, lowest byte in highest register no.

After noting this discrepancy, I am of course unsure about the whole 
matter. Could somebody tell me what convention is actually used by the 
compiler?

A word to register R1: it shall be 0 at all times according to GCC 
specs. In some occasions, the compiler uses this to set other registers 
to 0, by MOV reg, R0. On other occasions the compiler uses the CLR Reg 
instruction (which is actually a pseudo opcode that translates to EOR 
reg, reg). On the other hand, R0 and R1 are used by the MUL / MULS / 
MULSU instructions to return the multiplication result. Forgetting to 
clear R0 again after a multiplication (i.e. in an assembler routine) 
will thus lead to errors at some later time.

As long as the MOV is not used because it does not change any status 
flags, It might be a good idea if the compiler always used the CLR 
instruction.

Thanks in advance for some info on the register stuff,

Georg