Intel Pentium Instruction Set Reference

PUSH - Push Word or Doubleword Onto the Stack

Description

Decrements the stack pointer and then stores the source operand on the top of the stack. The address-size attribute of the stack segment determines the stack pointer size (16 bits or 32 bits), and the operand-size attribute of the current code segment determines the amount the stack pointer is decremented (2 bytes or 4 bytes). For example, if these address- and operand-size attributes are 32, the 32-bit ESP register (stack pointer) is decremented by 4 and, if they are 16, the 16-bit SP register is decremented by 2.(The B flag in the stack segment's segment descriptor determines the stack's address-size attribute, and the D flag in the current code segment's segment descriptor, along with prefixes, determines the operand-size attribute and also the address-size attribute of the source operand.) Pushing a 16-bit operand when the stack address-size attribute is 32 can result in a misaligned the stack pointer (that is, the stack pointer is not aligned on a doubleword boundary).

The PUSH ESP instruction pushes the value of the ESP register as it existed before the instruction was executed. Thus, if a PUSH instruction uses a memory operand in which the ESP register is used as a base register for computing the operand address, the effective address of the operand is computed before the ESP register is decremented.

In the real-address mode, if the ESP or SP register is 1 when the PUSH instruction is executed, the processor shuts down due to a lack of stack space. No exception is generated to indicate this condition.

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