3 ms·
SPARC is big-endian, and is likely the greatest correction to coders who maintain "all the world's a VAX!" Much gdb has been spilt on these shores. Both the VA
by chasil 3y ago
SPARC is big-endian, and is likely the greatest correction to coders who maintain "all the world's a VAX!" Much gdb has been spilt on these shores.
Both the VAX and x86(-64) are little-endian. The Itanium could run either, but was little-endian by default (HP-UX would toggle to big-endian).
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoFascinatingly, ARM (aarch64) can also do either; while the only operating system I know about that uses this fact is NetBSD, I have actually run that in big endian mode on a Raspberry Pi (3b) and it does actually work.
- chasil 3y agoThat is a really interesting fact.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoRight? I honestly don't yet understand why ARM designed BE mode into their shiny new architecture, but it's sweet that we have easily-available hardware that supports it.
- sillywalk 3y agoInterestingly (for some) "Through compiler and OS support [HPE NonStop OS] runs in Big Endian from the user’s perspective [ on x86-64 Xeon]" [0] Big Endian, how does it work? The x86 is little endian, right? • The compilers byte swap data items before placing them into memory for program variables • Does not apply to non-program variables such as return addresses pushed onto the memory stack • The OS along with the debuggers make the view complete • But if you just scroll through memory you can see a mix of Big and Little endian datums • Allows for binary data to be exchanged between Itanium and x86 systems without any special handling • In particular, messages sent via Expand between a NonStop x86 based system and a NonStop Itanium system require no extra handling. [0] https://dan-lewis-fns9.squarespace.com/s/NonStop-X-Overview-V3.pdf https://dan-lewis-fns9.squarespace.com/s/NonStop-X-Overview-...