Messages in this thread |  | | | From | Patrick Lerda <> | | Subject | Re: endiannes of the kernel | | Date | Thu, 29 Jul 1999 09:59:33 +0200 | |
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=us-ascii">
<META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="MS Exchange Server version 5.5.1960.3">
<TITLE>Re: endiannes of the kernel</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Linux has been written on a little endian architecture: intel. In little-endian mode</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">linux is well tested, the kernel works perfectly. If you chose big-endian mode, linux</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">is still operational, but some parts of the kernel will be broken. Drivers, filesystems etc...</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">must be written in a big-endian compatible way, all 16bits, 32bits access to</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">hardware or to external data structures must be converted using some macros</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">defined in the linux kernel. A lot of drivers were written specifically for intel and are not big-endian</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">compatible...</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">So linux is more reliable in little endian.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">LERDA Patrick</FONT>
</P>
</BODY>
</HTML> |  |