>>>>> "amith" == amith <amith@multitech.co.in> writes: amith> Now, i have a couple of doubts : amith> 1) i read somewhere on the net, that a processor can be set to either amith> Little endian or Big endian, configurable ? As people already said, some are fixed endian (e.g. ia32), some are h/w configurable (say with a processor pin), some are runtime configurable (e.g. powerpc). amith> 2) Could someone explain this with respect to the Little Endian amith> definition given above. amith> 6004 6006 amith> _________________ amith> | 5678 | 1234 | amith> |________|________ | amith> t1.w1 t1.w2 the int 0x12345678 occupies four bytes. With little endian the least-significant bytes are on lower addresses, i.e. the memory layout is ------------------- | 78 | 56 | 34 | 12 | ------------------- whereas with big endian the least significant bytes are on higher addresses, i.e. ------------------- | 12 | 34 | 56 | 78 | ------------------- The same applies to two-byte integers, hence with little endian the half integers are 0x5678 and 0x1234 (note that what is on lower addresses is less significant), whereas with big endian they are 0x1234 and 0x5678 (because what is on lower addresses is more significant). And as a side note, it's clear which is The Right Endian(tm): all other things equal with big endian you can read memory dumps (unless you're an Arab or Jewish, where it'd be easier to read little-endian dumps from right to left :D ) ~velco -- Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ FAQ: http://kernelnewbies.org/faq/
