Reserving an empty region
You can reserve an empty block of memory with a scatter file, such as the area used for the stack. Use the EMPTY
attribute for the execution region in the scatter-loading description.
to reserve an empty block of memory for the stack.
The block of memory does not form part of the load region, but is assigned for use at execution time. Because it is created as a dummy ZI region, the linker uses the following symbols to access it:
Image$$
.region_name
$$ZI$$BaseImage$$
.region_name
$$ZI$$LimitImage$$
region_name
$$ZI$$Length.
If the length is given as a negative value, the address is taken to be the end address of the region. This must be an absolute address and not a relative one.
In the following example, the execution region definition STACK 0x800000 EMPTY –
defines a region called
0x10000
STACK
that starts at address
and ends at address 0x7F0000
:0x800000
LR_1 0x80000 ; load region starts at 0x80000 { STACK 0x800000 EMPTY -0x10000 ; region ends at 0x800000 because of the ; negative length. The start of the region ; is calculated using the length. { ; Empty region for placing the stack } HEAP +0 EMPTY 0x10000 ; region starts at the end of previous ; region. End of region calculated using ; positive length { ; Empty region for placing the heap } … ; rest of scatter-loading description }
Note
The dummy ZI region that is created for anEMPTY
execution region is not
initialized to zero at runtime.
If the address is in relative (+
) form and the
length is negative, the linker generates an error.offset
The following figure shows a diagrammatic representation for this example.
Figure 7-5 Reserving a region for the stack
In this example, the linker generates the symbols:
Image$$STACK$$ZI$$Base = 0x7f0000 Image$$STACK$$ZI$$Limit = 0x800000 Image$$STACK$$ZI$$Length = 0x10000 Image$$HEAP$$ZI$$Base = 0x800000 Image$$HEAP$$ZI$$Limit = 0x810000 Image$$HEAP$$ZI$$Length = 0x10000
Note
The EMPTY
attribute applies only to an execution region. The linker
generates a warning and ignores an EMPTY
attribute used in a load region
definition.
The linker checks that the address space used for the EMPTY
region does
not coincide with any other execution region.