Updated ABI docs available + Exception Handling info

They're not marvelously better, but they include the introduction that I wrote a couple years ago (and have mirrored in this blog twice, now). So, check out https://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/7kcdt6fy(VS.80).aspx to see the x64 ABI stuff in all it's MSDN formatted glory.

In other news, I presented a talk at the Developer Division 'brown bag' performance series (a lunch time lecture for MS developers) about the performance cost of exception handling. I had never really sat down and looked at how various EH constructs impact performance. I actually came to a rather interesting conclusion: for x86, EH is costly, and really does hurt performance, even if you're primarily using C++ objects with destructors. For x64, however, the performance impact of using C++ objects with destructors and throwing exceptions for errors is far outweighed by the much-less complex flowgraph of a function that doesn't have to deal with both return values & error conditions. I'll be giving a pretty similar talk at the Longhorn SDR next week. (https://www.longhornsdr.com/agenda.htm). I'll be talking in the CF07 slot (which was apparently vacated by someone else with a different talk). I'll be focusing on x64 much more so that x86.  Perhaps I'll stick my slide deck up here after the talk...

And finally, I've been approached by about 4 different ISV's over the past few months about various questions about x64 & unwinding. I'm going to spend some of my free time writing a little [useless] JITter to figure out how to do this stuff right. If only I had a 64 bit laptop, I could do this while sitting watching my 2 girls do Tae Kwon Do twice a week...

-Kev