A stack frame procedure, or heavyweight procedure, allocates space for and saves on the stack its caller’s context—information about the part of a program that invokes the procedure, so that this information can be reinstated when the procedure finishes executing. Such a procedure not only saves and restores registers but also makes standard calls to other procedures. The stack frame has both a fixed part (whose size is known at compile time) and an optional, variable part. If the latter is not present, certain optimizations can be completed.

See Also: Buffer Overflows.