15 Aug
2024
15 Aug
'24
11:31 p.m.
On Aug 15, 2024, at 1:54 PM, John via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
...
That said - and I have no idea whether this actually influenced
anyone's decision for any system anywhere ever - one hard advantage of
little-endian representation is that, if your CPU does arithmetic in
serial fashion, you don't have to "walk backwards" to do it in the
correct sequence.
It certainly did. A storage startup I worked on had all its code targeted for a little
endian machine, and when it came time to consider moving to other chips the availability
of little endian mode was a major point. We did briefly consider one big endian only
chip, fortunately elected against it (PA Risc, which was acquired by Apple before they
could ship their product). So we stayed with MIPS, and I already mentioned some of the
complications even with supposedely little endian capable devices.
paul