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SubjectRe: Linux/IA-64 byte order

Is it too stupid to suggest an "ENDIANNESS" flag for mmap ? The overhead
for loading a page from disk is much bigger than the overhead for
rearranging the bytes. (Perhaps it should be not a flag but an ioctl..)

Vladimir Dergachev


On 9 Mar 1999, Linus Torvalds wrote:

> In article <199903090013.LAA21453@vindaloo.atnf.CSIRO.AU>,
> Richard Gooch <rgooch@atnf.csiro.au> wrote:
> > Hi, all. I've been discussing the byte order that Linux/IA-64 will
> >have with David Mosberger from HP. I'm arguing for big-endian to be
> >used.
>
> Not a chance in hell.
>
> The whole point of IA-64 is to run x86 binaries while still being able
> to do large data-sets (if you didn't want to run x86 binaries you should
> just buy an alpha instead, and forget about IA-64).
>
> And I'm not going to accept a IA-64 port that does big-endian IA-64 mode
> and little-endian x86 mode. That's just too ugly for words.
>
> >I implore you: please reconsider your decision. Don't punish Linux
> >because of the x86 legacy.
>
> Buy an ultra64 if you need big-endian and 64 bits. Really.
>
> We're going to run x86 binaries on any merced we ever have in the near
> future - we may certainly run native merced binaries too, but running
> x86 binaries is a given. Which would mean that if the Linux/merced port
> was natively big-endian, it would have to do a lot of extra conversions
> from x86 user space to kernel space, for no good technical reason.
>
> Mixing endianness on the fly is certainly possible, but stupid unless
> you have some REALLY good reason for it. And quite frankly, there are
> NEVER any good technical reasons for considering one endianness over
> another (it's a completely arbitrary thing).
>
> Linus
>
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