The caller should allocate stack frames for argument area?

[Pan ruochen]

Page 3-15 says:
(SYSTEM V APPLICATION BINARY INTERFACE, MIPS RISC Processor
Supplement
3rd Edition)
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function call argument area.  In a non-leaf function the maximum number
of bytes of arguments used to call other functions from the non-leaf func-
tion must be allocated.  However, at least four words (16 bytes) must al-
ways be reserved, even if the maximum number of arguments to any
called function is fewer than four words.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Do these words mean the caller is responsible for allocating function call
argument area on the run-time stack before calling the callee
function? And within
the callee function, the argument area is assumed ready and can be
used directly?

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Best Regards,
PRC
Oct 23, 2008