Summary

• The stack is LIFO, grows toward lower addresses; RSP is the top, RBP the frame base.
• push/pop move RSP by 8; call pushes a return address, ret pops it.
• A frame holds the return address, saved RBP, saved registers, and locals.
• Prologue: push rbp; mov rbp, rsp; sub rsp, N. Epilogue: leave; ret.
• SysV: 6 args in registers; Windows x64: 4 args plus shadow space.
• Overwriting the saved return address is the root of stack overflows (CSC 472).