Big-Endian vs. Little-Endian

"Tauno Voipio" <tauno.voipio@iki.fi.SPAMBAIT_REMOVE.invalid> writes:
> "Everett M. Greene" <mojaveg@iwvisp.com> wrote

> > At the risk of starting a flame war, which choice have people
> > really made with regard to Little-Endian vs. Big-Endian for
> > those processors where it's a design choice (ARM, PowerPC,...)?
> > I'm asking in the context of using such processors in embedded
> > applications where compatibility with anything in the outside
> > world is not a factor.
> 
> There is a slight advantage in little-endian: you can address
> the least significant part of a longer item with the same
> address as the original item.

And?

> In Intel 80x86 family, the lowest byte of a longword is
> in the same address as the longword, which most often
> is intuitively clear. This does not work in big-endian
> architectures.

It may be intuitively clear, but for what purpose?  How
often do you wish to address the LSbyte of a multi-byte
value?

"Peter Nachtwey" <pnachtwey@comcast.net> wrote:

>Hex dumps are things of the 80s.

...and the 60's, the 70's, the 90's, and the 00's...

--
Dan Henry

On Sat, 21 Aug 2004 09:19:11 -0400, "John Harlow"
<sirsausage@hotmail.com> wrote:

>> There is a slight advantage in little-endian: you can address
>> the least significant part of a longer item with the same
>> address as the original item.
>
>But the hex dumps are harder to read! ;)

Use a proper dump program that dumps bytes from right to left as the
VAX/VMS DUMP command did (since 1970's).

Paul

Everett M. Greene ??:
> At the risk of starting a flame war, which choice have people
> really made with regard to Little-Endian vs. Big-Endian for
> those processors where it's a design choice (ARM, PowerPC,...)?
> I'm asking in the context of using such processors in embedded
> applications where compatibility with anything in the outside
> world is not a factor.
network packets' header use the bigedian, but no need to call converting 
fuctions to convert the value in packet header if use bigedian machine

BZ

Everett M. Greene <mojaveg@mojaveg.iwvisp.com> says...

>"Tauno Voipio" <tauno.voipio@iki.fi.SPAMBAIT_REMOVE.invalid> writes:
> 
>> There is a slight advantage in little-endian: you can address
>> the least significant part of a longer item with the same
>> address as the original item.
>>
>> In Intel 80x86 family, the lowest byte of a longword is
>> in the same address as the longword, which most often
>> is intuitively clear. This does not work in big-endian
>> architectures.
>
>It may be intuitively clear, but for what purpose?  How
>often do you wish to address the LSbyte of a multi-byte
>value?

I do it all of the time, but I don't see having it at 
the same address as the longword as being any intuitively 
clearer. In fact, I find the opposite to be slightly more
intuitive.

How about 4-bit processors?  I am sure that I am not 
the only one here who like them...  Any opinions about
Big-Endian vs. Little-Endian when using multiple nybbles 
to make bytes?
 

>>But the hex dumps are harder to read! ;)
>>
>>
> 
> Hex dumps are things of the 80s. 


Strange, I thought I was looking at one a few days ago :)

Al

Al Borowski said...
> 
> >>But the hex dumps are harder to read! ;)
> >>
> > 
> > Hex dumps are things of the 80s. 
> 
> 
> Strange, I thought I was looking at one a few days ago :)

Me too.  

I've spent quite a bit of time looking at hex dumps in the last few 
months.  Heck, I even added a hex dump routine to my embedded app so I 
could enjoy the luxury of hex dumps from some of our remotely-located 
and fairly inaccessible units.


Casey

"Bill Zhao" <szbzhao@tom.com> wrote in message
news:cg8dqs$2sea$1@mail.cn99.com...
> Everett M. Greene ??:
> > At the risk of starting a flame war, which choice have people
> > really made with regard to Little-Endian vs. Big-Endian for
> > those processors where it's a design choice (ARM, PowerPC,...)?
> > I'm asking in the context of using such processors in embedded
> > applications where compatibility with anything in the outside
> > world is not a factor.
> network packets' header use the bigedian, but no need to call converting
> fuctions to convert the value in packet header if use bigedian machine
That partly depends whether the processor involved can read, or write,
non-byte quantities at arbitrary addresses.

    Andrew

"Michael N. Moran" <mnmoran@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:WmJVc.9060$%n4.423@bignews6.bellsouth.net...
> Peter Nachtwey wrote:
> > Hex dumps are things of the 80s.
>
> How sweet ... a newbie. ;-)
>
>
Hardly,  I have been at this for at least as long as  you.   I just don't
take pride in abusing myself looking at hex unless I must.  The last hex
dump I looked at was a couple years ago when there was a address line
problem when bring up a board.  However, bringing up a board doesn't take
much time and chosing a big or little Endian CPU based on how it displays
hex numbers for the hardware guys is short sighted.

Peter Nachtwey

"Everett M. Greene" wrote:

>At the risk of starting a flame war, which choice have people
>really made with regard to Little-Endian vs. Big-Endian for
>those processors where it's a design choice (ARM, PowerPC,...)?
>I'm asking in the context of using such processors in embedded
>applications where compatibility with anything in the outside
>world is not a factor.

I go with what the OS vendor choses so that I don't have to rebuild the
supplied libraries.

-- 
========================================================================
          Michael Kesti            |  "And like, one and one don't make
                                   |   two, one and one make one."
          mkesti@gv.net            |          - The Who, Bargain