On Thu, 7 Mar 2002, Ralf Baechle wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 12:25:11PM -0500, Marc Karasek wrote:
> > How many of you are involved with embedded linux development using a
> > MIPS processor?
> >
> > What endianess have you chosen for your project and why?
> >
> > If you have not guessed it, I am involved with a MIPS/Linux embedded
> > project and we are trying to determine if there are any pros or cons in
> > one endianess over the other.
>
> The MIPS ABI only covers big endian systems - every "real" MIPS UNIX
> system is big endian. Everything else is a GNU extension. There is
> hardly any reason to choose a particular byteorder as usually endianess
> swapping takes so little CPU time that it isn't even meassurable but so
> I'm told there are exceptions. If portability of software you're
> going to write wrt. external data representation (disk or network) is
> of any importance then I suggest you use a system of the opposite
> endianess which trip problems much faster.
I really like the last part! ;-)
BTW, you forgot to mention to go for a full 64-bit port, to trip even more
problems faster :-)
Gr{oetje,eeting}s,
Geert
--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org
In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
-- Linus Torvalds
