INSTRUCTION ENCODING TO INDICATE WHETHER TO STORE ARGUMENT REGISTERS AS STATIC REGISTERS AND RETURN ADDRESS IN SUBROUTINE STACK

A method and apparatus provide means for saving and restoring processor register values and allocating and deallocating stack memory. A first field of a save instruction encodes whether a value in a register of a processor is saved as a static value. A second field of the save instruction encodes whether a value in a register of a processor is saved as an argument value. A third field of the save instruction encodes a size of a stack frame created during execution of the save instruction. An argument value is saved in a calling program's stack frame. A static value is saved in a called program's stack frame. A restore instruction is used to restore static values and deallocate the stack frame. The save and restore instructions may be executed using any programmable device, including a single instruction set architecture processor or a multi-instruction set architecture processor.