Answer:

Yes. That is one of ideas of modularity. You want to write a subroutine without the need to look inside other modules.

Prolog of the Subroutine

The subroutine looks something like this:

## maxInt -- compute the maximum of two integer arguments
##
## Input:
## $a0 -- a signed integer
## $a1 -- a signed integer
##
## Returns:
## $v0 -- maximum

         .text
         .globl maxInt

maxInt:

         # prolog


         # body


         # epilog

This subroutine does not call another subroutine.

QUESTION 12:

According to the rules of stack-based linking, does this subroutine's prolog need to push the return address?