Messages in this thread | | | From | (H. Peter Anvin) | Subject | Re: endiannes of the kernel | Date | 29 Jul 1999 23:13:14 GMT |
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Followup to: <Pine.LNX.3.95.990729213635.852A-100000@localhost> By author: Gerard Roudier <groudier@club-internet.fr> In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel > > If both endian modes are really equivalent for the hardware, then the > right choice may depend on the following: > > - If you are a purist, you may just toss a coin to decide, since none > endian mode is superior to the other one. >
This is the common "peacemaking" wisdom, but I think, in fact, there are valid technical arguments for both views (my own techical assessment: littleendian is technically superior, but bigendian is used on the 'net. Some humans find littleendian confusing because most modern human writing systems write numbers in bigendian form.)
You sometimes find that drivers written on littleendian systems don't work on bigendian systems without porting, since there are some shortcuts that littleendian representation allows which are invalid on bigendian.
> - If you are rather pragmatic, you want to choose the endian mode of > the architecture that has the best Linux support, thus little endian. > (You must also think about all other tools needed for the O/S, and that > may have to deal with endianness).
-hpa -- "The user's computer downloads the ActiveX code and simulates a 'Blue Screen' crash, a generally benign event most users are familiar with and that would not necessarily arouse suspicions." -- Security exploit description on http://www.zks.net/p3/how.asp
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