15 Aug
2024
15 Aug
'24
6:11 p.m.
On Aug 15, 2024, at 1:27 PM, Michael Thompson
<michael.99.thompson(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Danny Cohen, author of "On holy wars and a plea for peace", on the left and me
in the white shirt, taken in 2003.
MIPS CPUs can be configured by the hardware to run in either big-endian or little-endian
mode.
Indeed, though depending on the vendor, support for one of the modes may be marginal.
I remember evaluating the Raza (now Broadcom) XLR processor when it first came out. Was
told it supported little endian, which we needed. Tried to configure the eval unit in
little endian mode -- dead as a doornail.
Asked the rep. Answer: "well, the *hardware* is designed to support it, but the
power on boot configuration code is big endian only". Oh. Ended up spending a month
or two converting fun stuff like DDR timing tuning loops to little endian. It did
eventually work, but no thanks to the people selling the device...
paul